Fans angry as Optus app scores own goal

Optus has defended its World Cup app after viewers complained of another night of disruption.

Football fans on Friday were unable to watch the game due to the Optus Sport app crumpling under the pressure of a heavy load of customers logging on to stream the Egypt-Uruguay match. Picture: AAP

Optus has been forced to defend its purpose-built app after Australian World Cup viewers complained of another night of disruption during which they were unable to stream matches due to the service freezing.

For the second night in a row, football fans took to social media to voice their grievances during Saturday night’s Australia-France match, with some having to watch the game on SBS, despite having paid for the Optus service.

Optus vice-president of regulatory and public affairs Andrew Sheridan told The Australian that a buffering problem on Saturday night was largely affecting customers on rival networks but “it’s our responsibility to fix it”.

An Optus spokesman confirmed there were no issues identified with its own network on the live stream.

“Some customers who watched the match on the Optus Sport app, on certain devices through other telco networks, ­experienced buffering issues,” the spokesman said.

“Optus has taken actions that are within our own control to ­improve the experience of these customers. As a result of these ­actions incidences of buffering ­reduced significantly during the course of the night to low levels. We believe the vast majority of viewers were not affected and had a good viewing experience.”

Non-Optus users pay a $15-a-month subscription to use the Optus Sports app so they can view the World Cup games. Optus customers have free access to the app.

The problems were isolated to Apple devices (iPhones, iPads and Apple TV). Users on Fetch TV and on Android devices were unaffected.

Mr Sheridan said there were two separate problems that affected the use of the app on Friday and Saturday nights.

Fans on Friday were unable to watch the game due to the Optus Sport app crumpling under the pressure of a heavy load of customers logging on to stream the Egypt-Uruguay match.

“That issue is now resolved and on Saturday night the system coped with a greater volume than we had seen on Friday,” Mr Sheridan said.

Saturday night’s buffering problem affected hundreds of customers compared with the thousands unable to view the game on Friday night, he said.

“We took a number of actions on our end to try and shift traffic flows around and optimise how traffic is being handled between the different networks,” Mr Sheridan said.

“And we saw some quite significant reductions in the course of the game on Saturday night due to some of those ­actions.

“We’re not trying to apportion blame to other carriers, but the ­reality is we’re tending to see the issue with customers on other networks.”

The fiasco is a major embarrassment for Optus, which has staked its future in the Australian market as a media-focused telco. It also highlights the challenges of using streaming as a medium to deliver high-demand sporting events such as the World Cup.