Optus has announced eligible postpaid customers (such as users who pay for monthly plans) will be given 200GB of extra data after 10 million customers were impacted by an outage on Wednesday.
Here’s the latest.
Optus data
From Monday, businesses and individuals will be able to access the extra data, which they’ll need to activate by the end of the year.
Prepaid customers will be able to activate unlimited data for use on weekends until the end of 2023.
Outage cause
During the data announcement, Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin blamed the outage on a network event that triggered a “cascading failure” of services.
Rosmarin has apologised, saying: “We know how important connectivity is to all our customers, and that we let you down”.
Financial compensation
The telecommunications industry ombudsman said it was providing support to consumers and small businesses impacted by the outage.
It has the power to direct a telco to pay up to $100,000 in compensation for claims of financial loss.
Greens Communications spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young said the outage disrupted “the lives and livelihoods of millions“.
