00:00 We know that this outage affected more than 10 million Australians and 400,000 businesses.
00:08 They were unable to make phone calls and access mobile internet for 14 hours last week.
00:15 And as a result of that outage, a Senate inquiry was launched.
00:19 And this morning, the CEO of Optus, Kelly Bayer-Rosmarin, has been questioned extensively
00:26 over Optus's handling of that outage.
00:31 She used it as an opportunity to defend the company's response, but also apologise to
00:37 customers and recommit to a promise to do better in the future.
00:43 Now we know that as part of this outage, that Optus landlines and some mobile phones could
00:50 not dial 000 during the blackout.
00:54 And the Optus CEO revealed that in the end, 228 000 calls were unable to be made during
01:02 the outage.
01:03 Now, of course, under Australian law, telcos are required to provide Australians with the
01:08 ability to contact emergency services.
01:12 Under questioning from Green Senator Sarah Hansen-Young, the Optus CEO was asked whether
01:17 or not Optus would take responsibility in regards to these emergency calls.
01:23 Here's what she had to say.
01:25 We really want this issue to be thoroughly investigated because multiple parties have
01:30 to work together to make sure that when there's an outage, the 000 calls still go through.
01:36 Sounds like you want to share the blame around.
01:40 We absolutely take accountability for the outage.
01:43 What I'm trying to explain is that the 000 system itself should have helped our customers
01:49 during our outage.
01:51 And we will take accountability for any role we've had in that.
01:54 But there are also probably changes that need to be made in other parts of that system.
02:00 Now Gemma, Ms Beyer-Rosmarin said that the company had contacted all 228 people who had
02:08 made those phone calls in the wake of that outage to make sure that they were OK.
02:13 And she said that as a result of those welfare checks, they found out that each of them were
02:17 OK.
02:18 And Monty, did the CEO mention compensation for affected customers?
02:22 Yes, she did Gemma.
02:24 So we know that customers were offered 200 gigabytes of data as compensation in the wake
02:31 of this outage.
02:33 We also know that affected customers and businesses could approach Optus if they had special circumstances
02:39 around any losses of money during the outage.
02:44 The CEO said that so far 8,500 customers and small businesses had reached out to Optus
02:52 seeking compensation.
02:54 Now she says that they are discussing around $430,000 in compensation and $36,000 of that
03:02 has already been applied or paid out, as she said.
03:06 Now she was asked if that was paid out in cash or in in-kind services, whether that
03:13 be like the additional data that has already been provided.
03:17 The CEO said that she would have to take that on notice.
03:21 There are a couple of other questions that she said that she would take on notice.
03:24 She has a few weeks now to respond to those questions.
03:28 And the inquiry doesn't have any other public hearings planned at this stage.
03:34 But the committee is expected to be delivering their report on this inquiry by December 9.
03:42 So we'll certainly be keeping an eye on that as it comes out.
03:44 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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