Mr Mkazi, who migrated from Jordan to Australia in 2007, said the problems with the EFTPOS system started about 1am (2am AEDT), just before the telecommunications provider went dark at about 4am Sydney time.
Even after his temporary set-up was organised, Mr Mkazi said, many customers who relied on their phones to make payments were still unable to pay for things.
Businesses across the country scrambled to adapt to the outage. Cafés resorted to taking cash payments or keeping a tally of customers who promised to come back on Thursday to pay for their coffees. Workers whose home Wi-Fi was cut off returned to their offices in droves.
Hospitals and banks
Themis Wood arrived for his shift at The Searchers, a record store in Melbourne’s inner city, to discover its EFTPOS machine was out of action. He quickly hung “cash only” signs up around the store.
“A few people have taken their frustrations out on me, but once they realised that it’s not my fault and I don’t work for Optus, they’ve been OK,” Mr Wood said.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said it was too early to discuss compensation for businesses affected by the outage, but they should keep receipts of additional expenses incurred.
Hospitals and emergency services were also hit by the outage. Ramsay Health Care, which owns 70 hospitals and clinics in Australia, said its phone services were affected.
Westpac, ANZ and Commonwealth Bank all pay Optus for telecommunications services and could not take or make calls from their call centres. The executive responsible for managing relationships with Optus’ large enterprise customers is former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian.
Airtasker reported that users were posting ads on the jobs website to help them find workarounds. One woman offered $150 for someone to buy and deliver a SIM card to her.
“I’m an Optus customer affected by the outage and need to be connected for work rather than use friends phone. Need a SIM card … Telstra or Vodafone is fine and delivered to my door ASAP,” she posted.
Couriers at Good & Fugly, which makes thousands of daily deliveries of fruit and vegetables across the country, had a “challenging day” because they rely on the Optus network for navigation, co-founder Richard Tourino said.
“It’s been a scramble to ensure our boxes are getting to our customers today,” Mr Tourino said. “Our Wi-Fi is down in Melbourne, so we are piggybacking off a partner there and communicating over FaceTime, WhatsApp and email.”