Optus outage: network faces Senate inquiry and government review after Australia-wide loss of service

Optus is scrambling to regain public support after Wednesday’s 14-hour outage by offering “eligible” customers a free data pack, as it faces a senate inquiry and separate government review.

The telco giant’s network dropped out from about 4am on Wednesday, leaving millions of customers including hospitals, schools, financial institutions and government departments unable to make or receive calls for at least nine hours.

Some people’s ability to call triple zero was also affected by the nationwide outage.

On Thursday afternoon the telco announced it would offer eligible postpaid customers, both small businesses and consumers, 200GB of extra data to activate before the end of the year.

Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said the telco was “deeply sorry for yesterday’s outage”.

“We know how important connectivity is to all our customers, and that we let you down.”

The telco has said a ‘network event yesterday triggered a cascading failure’ which resulted in the shutdown of services to our customers.

“We truly appreciate our customers’ patience and understanding as we worked to restore our operations yesterday,” Bayer Rosmarin said.

Earlier, The communications minister, Michelle Rowland announced the review will be conducted by the communications department, and that it would look at potential lessons from the outage.

Speaking to Nine’s Today program, Rowland said: “It is critical that industry and governments take stock following large-scale outages, given no network is immune.”

The terms of reference and next steps will be announced at a later date, the minister said.

On Thursday morning, the Senate voted to hold an inquiry into the outage after the motion, moved by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, passed 39 to 20 when the minor party teamed up with crossbenchers and the opposition against the federal government.

The inquiry will centre around two main points, focusing on Optus’ handling of the incident, how it compensates its customers and what the federal government can do to ensure reliable coverage.

The committee is due to report back on 9 December.

Hanson-Young said the lives and livelihoods of millions were “acutely disrupted on Wednesday, adding: “the public deserves better.”

Victorian premier Jacinta Allan said the state’s department of government services would also conduct a review of its contracts with Optus.

New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, had said Optus should compensate customers who were affected by the outage especially given the telco was “pretty tough” on people who didn’t pay their phone or internet bills on time.

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Speaking on ABC radio, Rowland said that “Optus would do well to take on board” the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s advice that customers may be allowed to claim compensation even when the telco is not contractually bound to provide it.

Andrew Williams, the chief executive officer of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, echoed the call on ABC news radio. He urged business customers affected by the outage to “keep records that can quantify” any financial losses caused by the cut to services.

Andrew McKellar, chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said small businesses were particularly affected by the loss of trading caused by the outage and that they should be compensated appropriately.

Guardian Australia reported yesterday the outage was likely caused by a misconfiguration in the company’s network but Optus has yet to provide any detail on the cause.

Responding to claims of poor communication regarding the outage, Bayer Rosmarin told the Sydney Morning Herald that her team had “been very transparent and forthcoming, as we always are”.

“But I understand that customers are still frustrated because the only message that they wanted to hear was that the services were being restored. And we weren’t in a position to do that early on in the day. And so that was frustrating, but it wasn’t because we weren’t communicating expeditiously,” she said.

Acma is also separately conducting an investigation into Optus’s compliance with rules requiring emergency calls to fall over to other networks when the services are unavailable.

Vodafone and its related brands experienced a “four fold” increase in sales activity on the day of the Optus outage, a spokesperson has confirmed. Guardian Australia understands other mobile companies also saw a rise in sales.

Wednesday’s outage occurred only a year after the Singaporean-owned telco suffered a massive data breach from a cyber-attack that compromised the personal data of up to 9.8 million customers.

The industry watchdog has also asked for small businesses to discuss compensation options with Optus, given the impact on earnings during the failure. Rosmarin said the company would turn its attention to ‘thanking’ customers for their patience and “reward them for their loyalty” to Optus in the near future.

Additional reporting by Josh Taylor, Catie McLeod, Benita Kolovos and Cait Kelly.