Optus executives are under fire from customers and businesses for refusing compensation — saying it would amount to “less than $2” — after a nationwide outage.
The federal government has announced a review into the network outage which left millions of Optus customers without phone or internet access on Wednesday.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said connectivity was “absolutely essential” for consumers and businesses.
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“While we welcome that Optus services were restored over the course of the day, it is critical the government conducts a process to identify lessons to be learned from yesterday’s outage,” she said.
Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin reportedly told The Daily Telegraph that “refunding people for one day is probably less than $2” and the company would instead look at ways to help “thank” and “reward” loyal customers.
The Daily Telegraph says it pointed out to managing director of customer solutions Matt Williams that businesses paid higher rates to use the company’s services, to which he replied the “same principle would still apply”.
The telco believes a “network fault” was behind Wednesday’s outage.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority has started an independent assessment to investigate Optus’ compliance with the rules on emergency calls, after some users reportedly struggled to contact triple-0.
The watchdog has also urged small businesses to get in contact with Optus to discuss options for compensation.
“What we would encourage you to do is contact Optus and … help them understand what the impact was on them and their earnings,” Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Cynthia Gebert said.
The outage is the second blow to recently hit the telco after last year’s data breach.
– With AAP