Optus, one of Australia’s leading telecommunications providers, has announced a compensation plan for the millions of customers affected by Wednesday’s catastrophic outage after refusing widespread calls for refunds.
The nationwide service disruption left over 10 million people, nearly half of the population, without phone and internet services. In response, Optus is offering additional data to select customers as a gesture of goodwill.
Starting Monday, November 13, eligible postpaid customers, including small businesses and consumers, will be able to access an additional 200GB of data. Customers will have until the end of the year to activate this extra data. Prepaid customers, who were also impacted by the outage, will receive unlimited data on weekends until the end of the year.
Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, CEO of Optus, expressed her hope that the extra data would assist affected customers, especially during the upcoming holiday season.
“We’re deeply sorry for yesterday’s outage. We know how important connectivity is to all our customers, and that we let you down,” Rosmarin said in a statement.
“We truly appreciate our customers’ patience and understanding as we worked to restore our operations yesterday.
“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.”
The outage was attributed to problems with the router network, a critical component of Optus’ infrastructure.
In a statement, Optus explained, “In common with major global telecommunication networks, the Optus network is designed with multiple layers of fallback and redundancy. At the heart of this is a modern intelligent router network developed with the world’s leading vendors.”
“Despite this, a network event yesterday triggered a cascading failure which resulted in the shutdown of services to our customers. We deeply regret the inconvenience caused.”
Optus has promised a thorough investigation into the incident to prevent future occurrences. The company stated, “Our engineers are investigating thoroughly, and we will learn from this outage and continue to improve. We welcome and intend to cooperate fully with the Government investigations.”
The outage threw various critical systems, including payment, transport, and health services, into chaos, prompting outrage among affected users and widespread calls for the company to compensate those impacted.
Hospitals struggled to receive phone calls, small businesses faced difficulties in processing electronic payments, and train networks and ride-share services simultaneously shut down in some cities.
The incident drew attention from government authorities and regulatory bodies, prompting calls for a comprehensive review of the telecommunications industry’s infrastructure and safeguards.
The federal government has announced an investigation into the outage with Communications Minister Michelle Rowland confirming her department will lead the probe, the ABC reported.
The latest outage is a further blow to Optus’s reputation, following a major cyber breach reported more than a year ago.
Customers are encouraged to check Optus’ official website or contact their customer service for detailed information on how to activate the extra data compensation.
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