An Australian woman who was among millions affected by the Optus outage has revealed how she only became aware of the blackout through her cat.
The woman told Sydney‘s WSFM radio duo Brendan Jones and Amanda Keller her cat woke her up on Wednesday morning when its automatic feeder stopped working.
‘This woman said she found out about the Optus outage from her cat. The cat has an automatic WiFi feeder that’s connected to Optus,’ Keller told listeners.
‘When breakfast wasn’t delivered at 6.10am, the cat went to the bedroom to lodge a complaint with management.’
The 10million Australians who rely on the Optus network were left without internet access from 4am to 1pm on Wednesday.
A woman’s cat alerted her to the Optus outage on Wednesday morning after it’s automatic feeder, which works on WiFi, didn’t deliver its breakfast
The 10million Australians who rely on the Optus network were left without internet access from 4am to 1pm on Wednesday
The failure caused widespread chaos with many workers, small businesses and city-wide transport systems downed.
Despite the issue supposedly being fixed, several frustrated customers said their services were still down on Thursday.
‘Woke up and still no internet. Optus did kindly send me a text telling me that I’ve used up half of my mobile data. Gee, I wonder why that is Optus?!! FFS!’ one wrote on social media site X.
‘Day two of outage – PHONE APPS NOT WORKING / TV STREAMING NOT WORKING. No word from company about what is happening,’ said another.
‘Still no wifi. “Restored”, lies,’ said another.
‘Optus internet is down again this morning. I’ve restarted everything and still not working. I can’t even get onto the Optus app. At least my phone is working,’ another shared.
‘Still no internet this morning after 26 hours. CEO comes out yesterday to say all services restored which is just not true,’ one Optus customer tweeted.
Amanda Keller (above) told WSFM listeners the cat woke its owner up at 6.10am to ‘lodge a complaint with management’ about its missing meal
Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin (above) blamed Wednesday’s outage on a ‘technical network fault’
Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin had earlier blamed a ‘technical network fault’ for the blackout but refused to provide further details.
Several more Optus customers left their own experiences in the comments under Jonesy and Amanda’s video but titled the cat’s complaining ‘by far the best Optus outage story so far’.
‘A true victim story of this outage,’ one person wrote of the cat.
‘I found out my internet was back on when my Optus bill arrived. Are they kidding?,’ another said.
‘The cat probably knew more than the Optus CEO,’ another wrote.