As the hearing draws to a close, Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young says she is “flabbergasted” that Optus hadn’t considered letting its customers roam onto the Telstra or TPG networks during the national outage.
“Is it because you don’t want your customers being able to roam on a competitor’s network? Is this about protecting your own profits ahead of the interests of the customer?” she asks. “I don’t understand why this wouldn’t already be on your list of things to investigate.”
Senate inquiry chair Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Responds Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin: “Firstly, we don’t see profits and customers as opposed in any way. We only make a profit if we have happy customers, and more customers choose us and more customers choose to stay with us. So for us to be profitable, we want to do the right thing for customers.
“And secondly … given that Optus has … about 30 per cent market share, let’s say hypothetically that there was a fault on Telstra network, where they have 50 per cent market share, and suddenly all of those subscribers were to be on our network. We would have to have already invested in the capacity to be able to cater for that many customers simultaneously.
“So there are a lot of considerations if we go down this path about investment capacity, and how that all works to make sure that you don’t inadvertently, if one goes down, bring down another network.”
Hanson-Young suggests Bayer Rosmarin “get on with talking to your competitors and making sure the Australian people are actually looked after and can access a service that is essential.”
