Optus offers ‘hollow gesture’ to Aussies hurt by its protracted outage

The embattled telco has revealed what customers will get as way of compensation for the disastrous outage – but there’s a key catch in its offer.

Optus will give customers on post paid plans 200GB of extra data — that they have until the end of the year to access — while pre paid customers will get unlimited data, but only on weekends, as recompense for the losses and inconvenience caused by its massive blackout this week.

Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said the telco was “deeply sorry for yesterday’s outage” and admitted “we let you down”, but then offered free data “during the holidays”, that industry insiders say is unlikely to be used up by customers.

“We know that there is nothing we can do to make up for yesterday and what customers want most is for our network to work all the time — which is our number one priority — but we also want to acknowledge their patience and loyalty by giving them additional data to help during the holidays, when so many people consume more data with friends and family,” Ms Bayer Rosmarin said.

From Monday, November 13, eligible postpaid customers — including small businesses — would be able to access 200GB of extra data, with customers given until the end of the year to activate, she said.

Eligible prepaid customers would be able to access unlimited data on weekends until the end of the year.

Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin. Picture: Supplied

Optus blamed the outage on a network event that “triggered a cascading failure which resulted in the shutdown of services to our customers”.

“In common with major global telecommunication networks, the Optus network is designed with multiple layers of fall back and redundancy. At the heart of this is a modern intelligent router network developed with the world’s leading vendors,” Optus said in a statement released on Thursday night.

“Despite this, a network event yesterday triggered a cascading failure which resulted in the shutdown of services to our customers. Our engineers are investigating thoroughly and we will learn from this outage and continue to improve. We welcome, and intend to co-operate fully with, the government investigations.”

From Monday, customers could go to optus.com.au for more details on how to add the offer to their plans, Optus said.

It added businesses which had been “uniquely impacted” could contact their Optus Business Centre or Business Care on 133 343.

A telecommunications industry insider told the Herald Sun the free extra data was a hollow gesture as the average Australian mobile used less than 15GB a month of data, and it cost Optus nothing if no one used all the “free” extra data it was offering.

It appeared nothing had been offered to NBN broadband users, the insider said.

An ACCC Internet Activity Report for the period ending December 2022 and released in June this year shows pre paid customers used an average of 7.2 GB of data per month and post paid customers 14.5 GB.

An average of 11.5 GB was used by mobile broadband customers.

Optus blackout far from only telco fail: see list of other outages

In June 2018, global telecommunications giant Ericsson was to blame for thousands of Telstra mobile phone customers being disconnected for more than 18 hours.

Australians are yet to be told who, and what, is to blame for Wednesday’s protracted Optus outage — but they are demanding answers.

Telecommunications sector insiders say the Optus outage — that lasted many hours — was the equivalent of “centuries in telco time”.

Meanwhile, rival telco Vodafone on Wednesday reported it had experienced a huge jump in interest, as a result of the Optus failure.

Triple-0 calls and some international roaming fell back on to its and Telstra’s networks, amid the chaos, a source said.

“We have seen a large spike in activity since the outage, with hourly traffic to the Vodafone website almost doubling compared to the previous day,” a Vodafone spokeswoman said.

The telco also actively seized the opportunity of the Optus outage to promote its eSIM technology to cut-off Australians.

Vodafone has reported a huge spike in interest. Picture: David Clark

Vodafone said its eSIM worked in compatible handsets by using a built-in, programmable chip to connect customers instead of plastic SIM cards, which meant people could simply connect via the net instead of going to a store to sign up.

“With Vodafone eSIM, you don’t need to wait days for a physical SIM card to be mailed out and get your mobile service working. Just visit one of our stores, call us, jump online or connect through the Vodafone app and we will get you back online in no time,” a Vodafone spokesperson said.

Other telco pain

1. July 24, 2015

Optus suffered a major outage in Victoria, Tasmania and NSW. “We apologise to customers affected, thank them for their patience and appreciate them getting in contact,” an Optus spokesman said at the time.

2. March 2, 2016

Telstra’s prepaid mobile customers were unable to make phone calls, top up or check balances in a widespread outage. It was the second time in the same month that many Telstra customers had been unable to make calls or access data.

3. May 21, 2018

Telstra suffered a nationwide outage for seven hours after it shut down Voice and data services for millions of its customers. It was the second nationwide mobile outage in the month for Australia’s largest mobile carrier, with 4G services and internet connections cut off to customers around the country. It also raised concerns about callers’ ability to contact triple-0

Telstra has also suffered many outages in recent years. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

4. June 20, 2018

Global telecommunications firm Ericsson accepted the blame for thousands of Australian mobile phone users being disconnected for longer than 18 hours. The incident stopped Telstra wholesale customers from making phone calls or accessing the internet on their smartphones.

Telstra wholesale customers in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart, Adelaide, and Darwin, with Telstra reported connections were either “interrupted” or “intermittent”.

It’s understood several thousand Australians using Telstra services through discount carriers such as Woolworths Mobile, ALDIMobile, and Belong lost services.

Ericsson issued a statement apologising for inconvenience to users.

“Ericsson today experienced an issue with the platform it provides to Telstra Wholesale to support its mobiles business,” the company said in a statement at the time.

“During this time some Telstra Wholesale end users may not have been able to connect their services.”

5. Aug 3, 2018

An Optus mobile outage left customers in Melbourne, Sydney, Tasmania, Brisbane and Adelaide temporarily unable to make or receive calls on their mobile phones

The telco giant confirmed the outage in a tweet which stated: “We’re aware of an issue impacting some customers trying to make or receive calls on our mobile network. Our tech teams are urgently working to resolve this. We apologise for any inconvenience.”

The outage came after its World Cup streaming service, Optus Sport, failed — forcing it to hand coverage of the event to SBS. Optus admitted it underestimated customer demand for its live streaming platform, and had to offer full refunds to customers.

6. May 31, 2019

Telstra customers around the country were unable to make phone calls after the telco was hit by a major outage, but data and messaging remained unaffected.

The company advised customers to use apps like Facetime instead of making phone calls.

7. Oct 18, 2022

Customers reported being unable to make calls to mobiles on the Telstra network. While a call appeared to go through, it then disconnected once the receiver picked up.

8. May 11, 2023

Telstra suffered a national outage affecting hundreds of thousands of customers, who were left unable to make or receive calls.

Optus closes store doors

Optus closed doors to stores across the country on Wednesday, amid the chaos of its crippling national outage, further infuriating customers.

Photos show shut shops, some with signs saying the doors are closed “due to the current Optus outage”, and warning they will not reopen until “this has been resolved”.

It is not known if all stores closed, and whether they were directed to do so or made independent decisions.

It comes as the beleaguered telco reiterates its apology to frustrated Australians for its very long blackout, and desperately works to restore services.

An Optus spokesperson said: “We reiterate our apology to customers for the nationwide service outage that has occurred this morning. Some services across fixed and mobile are now gradually being restored.

“This may take a few hours for all services to recover and different services may restore at different sites over that time.

Optus stores across the country are shutting their doors, as they are besieged by angry customers.

The Doncaster Optus store on Wednesday. Picture: Supplied

“We are aware of some mobile phones having issues connecting to triple-0. If Optus customers need to call emergency services, we suggest trying to find an alternative device.”

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) has said it is ready to help customers get refunds.

“If you have contacted Optus and you are unhappy with the response, you can make a complaint with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman,” it said.

Communication Minister Michelle Rowland said customers should document how the outage had affected them, in as much detail as possible, and record their losses.

“In relation to customers who have been affected … at this time it is probably too early to be discussing or be giving definitive views about compensation or other consumer rights,” she said.

“I reiterate the Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman (TIO) statement. It’s important, especially for small businesses, to keep receipts so that any recourse and any redress that may be available to them has that evidentiary base.”

Claims outage was upgrade gone wrong

The Optus blackout that caused chaos across the country was likely the result of a planned outage “that went catastrophically wrong”, a telecommunications industry insider believes.

Speaking exclusively to the Herald Sun, the insider said the fact the outage happened at 4am Wednesday morning strongly suggested it was planned.

He said telcos typically conducted their software and ‘hard’ hardware updates and upgrades in the very early hours of the morning, when most of the population was asleep, so as to impact as few people as possible, for as little time as possible.

“It looks very much like it’s probably a planned outage which has gone terribly wrong,” he said.

“It was several hours, which is like centuries in telco time.”

Optus has ruled out the chaos was caused by hackers and the government has confirmed a nationwide outage was triggered by a fault in the provider’s core network.

The Melbourne CBD Bourke St. store. Picture: Supplied

A note on an Optus store door. Picture: Supplied

A closed Optus store. Picture: Supplied

“Normally when outages happen … you find out what’s triggered it and you can roll it back pretty quickly. For example, if it’s software update you roll back to the previous version, and things go back online,” the insider said.

“So there’s probably had some sort of catastrophic failure at the hardware, software level … it’s just broken for some reason, gone.”

Telco vendors like Ericsson and Nokia were often the ones tasked with performing updates, because they knew the technology best, he said.

Monash University cybersecurity expert Professor Nigel Phair agreed a catastrophic planned upgrade failure appeared the most likely reason for the long-running blackout at this point, with hacking now ruled out.

“This is massive. Networks like this don’t just fall over … something’s happened and it’s gone terribly badly,” he said.

Millions of Optus customers were left unable to make calls, texts or connect to the internet in the outage that affected banks, hospitals, businesses and transport networks.

At least 11 Victorian hospitals, including the Royal Melbourne and Austin, had services interrupted while the outage temporarily halted all Melbourne metro train services. Optus has 10.2 million customers.

Meanwhile the Commonwealth Bank of Australia said if Optus customers were encountering difficulties with online banking they could visit its branches and ATMs.

NetBank, CommBank app, CommBiz and merchant terminals were also all fully available.

“All of our digital banking services are up, but if you are an Optus customer without internet access that is when issues will be experienced,” it said.

Optus has apologised to its customers for the chaos. Picture: Supplied

It comes after cyber criminals hacked into Optus’s customer database in September last year, stealing and publishing the personal and identity information of customers, including passport, drivers licence and Medicare numbers, dates of birth and residential addresses.

This prompted the widespread reissuing of identity documents and caused customer anxiety about whether they would become the victims of identity theft or other financial crime.

Originally published as Optus offers ‘hollow gesture’ to Aussies hurt by its protracted outage