“We found out early this morning that we couldn’t accept payments,” she said. “We were a bit panicked. It’s quite annoying.”
Other small businesses asked customers to use PayID to transfer money, or took down people’s names, hoping they would return with cash.
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The outage affected hospitals, public transport and hindered people trying to phone triple zero.
In Brisbane, several major health providers, including Greenslopes Private Hospital and North West Private Hospital, confirmed they were unable to receive calls on landlines.
In a statement to Facebook, the hospitals’ provider, Ramsay Health Care, advised people to “please direct inquiries via the contact form on the local hospital’s website”.
A Queensland Health spokesperson said the primary telecommunications provider for public hospitals was Telstra. “Services are operating and able to support consumers,” they said.
Optus boss Kelly Bayer Rosmarin apologised for the outage, telling the provider’s 10.2 million customers they were “really, really apologetic and sorry that our connection has gone down today”.
Bayer Rosmarin promised Optus’s teams were working with “huge effort to try and restore services as a priority”.
The issue was also affecting other providers using the Optus network, including Amaysim, Vaya, Aussie Broadband, Moose Mobile, Coles Mobile, Spintel, Southern Phone, Gomo and Dodo Mobile.
