Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 3 years ago
There's mounting pressure on Optus to do more to explain itself after yesterday's unprecedented phone and internet outage. The telco is facing numerous inquiries into the debacle which affected ten million people for most of the day. As calls for compensation grew late today, Optus announced it would offer some free data for customers.

Category

šŸ“ŗ
TV
Transcript
00:00 The day after the Optus outage caused turbulence at his business.
00:07 Yesterday's loss was big for me. People don't bring cash nowadays.
00:10 This Sydney dry cleaner is counting the cost of turning away customers
00:14 because his payment system was down.
00:17 If they decide to go away,
00:20 that money that I could get from the customer at that point, it's lost.
00:26 Pubs across South Australia poured fewer beers.
00:30 They're demanding Optus pays the tab.
00:33 When somebody has to pay compensation,
00:35 it makes them try a lot harder into the future.
00:38 Optus is facing growing scrutiny over just what went wrong.
00:42 The Federal Government announced its own probe
00:45 and executives can expect a grilling at a Senate inquiry.
00:49 Australians expect that there will be follow-up,
00:51 that there will be lessons learnt.
00:53 It's important to understand how this can be certainly avoided in future.
00:58 As if that's not enough,
01:00 the communications regulator will investigate the impact on emergency calls.
01:05 Australians need to have confidence in triple zero.
01:08 Optus continued to apologise today,
01:10 with the Telco saying it will cooperate with the various inquiries.
01:15 And any lessons learnt are likely to be helpful for both Optus and others.
01:20 Today, Optus was under pressure to announce its own compensation package.
01:25 They're going to have to come to the table and do something big,
01:28 in my view, to keep their customer base.
01:31 Reach out and let Optus know what the impact has been on you.
01:35 And as I said, if you can't get a fair and reasonable outcome,
01:38 contact our office.
01:39 Hey, Optus.
01:41 And depending on the situation,
01:43 customers may be able to break contracts early or avoid termination fees.
01:48 If you break a contract, there may be a requirement for you
01:50 to pay out the balance of what's owing on the phone.
01:53 And late this evening,
01:55 Optus announced customers will receive free extra data
01:59 to be claimed by the end of the year.
02:01 But there are bigger questions being asked about where the buck stops.
02:05 We're calling on the federal government to step up
02:09 and take more of a role in directly regulating the Telco sector.
02:14 This is enough.
02:15 This is an essential service
02:17 and we need more direct regulation.
02:19 The biggest challenge is working out how to ensure an outage
02:22 like this never happens again.
02:24 That won't be easy, but the federal government is promising
02:27 these reviews will bring change.
02:29 bring change.
02:31 [BLANK_AUDIO]
Comments

Recommended