Thousands of Aussies have found themselves in crisis at Optus after being caught up in the worst communications blackout in the country’s history.
More than 10 million people and businesses were left in disarray on Wednesday after the telecom provider’s network went down around 4am, leaving people unable to connect to the internet or make or receive calls.
Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, 46, then created a PR disaster of her own when she went missing for seven hours as essential services and businesses struggled to cope.
But Ms Bayer Rosmarin and managing director of customer solutions Matt Williams have since told media that compensating customers for the outage period is off the table because “reimbursing people for one day is probably less than $2.”
Many Aussies have been affected by the outage and lack of compensation, including Perth yoga teacher Eve, who describes her time-consuming and costly attempts to get to the airport to catch a flight after being unable to book an Uber.
She estimates Optus now owes her $1,000 after she had to park and rebook her missed flight to Melbourne.
Eve was one of 10 million Optus customers affected by Wednesday’s outage
“So I booked an Uber this morning and my home network is also on Optus,” Eve explained.
‘So I had to walk to a cafe that had WiFi and of course they were at Optus so I had to walk to another cafe to use their WiFi which they weren’t happy with so I had to say ‘Look I’ve got a flight to catch .
‘I ended up driving myself (to the airport) and ended up in long-term parking, which I’d never done before.
“The long-term parking lot is a long way from the airport, so I had to get on a shuttle bus and this shuttle bus was the slowest I’ve ever ridden in my life.”
“He stopped at every parking spot. I know it sounds silly, but I’ve never used long-term parking before.’
“Anyway, I missed my flight.”
Meanwhile, a young man was furious about the disturbance.
‘I’m literally under house arrest because I have no network. It’s literally SOS! I’m really going to kill someone!’
This Australian was furious after being confined to his home for five hours without a working phone
He added that it is not the first time he has been affected by an Optus outage.
“Optus, sort your shit out bro! This is cooked. If I don’t get paid, I’m going to sue!’
The outage had a major impact on student Chole Bella, who expressed her frustration, saying: ‘I woke up and Optus decided to ruin my day.’
Student Chloe Bella revealed that Optus ruined her day due to the outage
The government announced on Thursday it will conduct an investigation into the Optus outage.
“While we welcome the restoration of Optus services during the day, it is vital that the Government implements a process to learn lessons from yesterday’s outage,” Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said.
‘It is crucial that industry and governments take stock after large-scale disruptions as no network is immune.’