Far North businesses battle on as Optus outage impacts sales

Cash-strapped customers scrounged for legal tender in Cairns this morning as a national Optus outage left EFTPOS and ATM services down.

Small businesses across Far North Queensland have resorted to IOUs and legal tender as a national Optus outage left the retail and hospitality sectors’ hip pockets hurting.

Cash-strapped customers scrounged for change in Cairns on Wednesday morning with dozens of coffee shops’ ATM services down.

Billy's Coffee owner Billy Haoda is relieved the latest Optus outage didn't affect his Cairns-based business, located on Sheridan Street.

Billy’s Coffee owner, Billy Haoda on Sheridan Street counted himself among the lucky ones.

“My wife is with Optus but the business has always been with Telstra,” Mr Haoda said.

“You always feel for the other shops when they’re affected.”

Some caffeine-deprived customers were forced to soldier through the day without their morning jolt of java, Envy Espresso’s Tinn Dunn said.

“We take cash but a lot of people don’t (carry money with them) and it definitely influences our business,” Ms Dunn said.

“Of course our business goes down a little bit as a result.”

A view of the Optus shop in darkness in Sydney's CBD as an outage today throws commuter transport and small business into chaos. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

Cruze Coffee manager Jake Remmington said he was grateful his business had access to Telstra through its EFTPOS terminals as a back-up.

“If your whole operation is with Optus, it’s tricky though because not many people carry cash with them these days,” Mr Remmington said.

“My husband works from home for an energy company based in Melbourne and we’re with Optus, so he can’t do much at the moment.

“He can’t even sit at home and watch Netflix while he waits.”

Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said some services began coming back online about midday Wednesday, after millions of customers across Australia were hit by a massive outage impacting banking, hospitals, travel and businesses.

Ms Rosmarin said crews still can’t confirm the cause of the outage.

“There is no indication that it has anything to do with a hack or cyber attack,” she said on 2GB.

“We’re still investigating the root cause, as you know we work very hard 24/7 to keep our customers connected.

“This is a very unusual occurrence and as soon as we understand exactly what happened we will be forthcoming with details.”

Originally published as Far North businesses battle on as Optus outage impacts sales