Optus says Wednesday’s 14-hour outage was the result of a routine software upgrade that took Optus’s network offline and forced staff to physically reboot services across the country.
It comes as the company moved to establish a dedicated complaints team for small businesses affected and said it would work to “resolve concerns” after criticism of the company’s compensation offer.
A spokesperson confirmed on Monday that the cause of the outage was changes to routing information from an international peering network after a routine software upgrade at 4.05am on Wednesday.
“These routing information changes propagated through multiple layers in our network and exceeded preset safety levels on key routers which could not handle these. This resulted in those routers disconnecting from the Optus IP Core network to protect themselves,” a spokesperson said.
“The restoration required a large-scale effort of the team and in some cases required Optus to reconnect or reboot routers physically, requiring the dispatch of people across a number of sites in Australia. This is why restoration was progressive over the afternoon.”
This explanation was in line with what experts had suggested caused the outage.
The company last week announced it would provide 200GB of free data for mobile and small business customers. The move was labelled inadequate and a hollow gesture for the 10 million customers who were left disconnected.
On Monday, Optus announced it was going further for small business customers and established a “dedicated specialist team” to assess complaints about the outage.
“We will look at the customer’s specific circumstances and work with the customer on what options we can take to resolve their concerns,” an Optus spokesperson said.
The company has launched a page for people to obtain their 200GB of free data. For mobile customers, people can get 100GB per billing cycle for the next three cycles by activating it through their Optus app.
NBN customers are also being promised faster speeds for December as part of what Optus says is a gesture of goodwill.
It comes as the telco prepares to deal with the government response to the outage. In question time on Monday, the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, said last week’s outage underscored just how essential connectivity is for all Australians.
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“The impacts were felt across the economy and community with repercussions for eftpos systems, hospitals and public transport, and consumers and business customers were understandably frustrated,” she said.
“For some small businesses it represented a whole day’s trade. For Australians with a disability, including those relying on internet-assisted technology, the outage would have been deeply distressing.”
Rowland said the communications department was working on its terms of reference for a review to reduce the risk of a future disruption of this case occurring, while the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) was conducting a review into how Optus mobile customers were unable to dial 000, despite provisions in place to allow it without the Optus network running.
“Our government will carefully consider recommendations from the upcoming reviews to ensure regulatory and policy settings adapt and respond so as to keep Australians safe and reliably connected,” she said.
The company’s embattled CEO, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, will face a Senate inquiry into the outage for two hours on Friday morning. The chair of the committee, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, described the 200GB offer as “pretty pathetic” and said she would be seeking for the company to be more transparent and accountable for what caused the outage.
She told Nine News her first question to Bayer Rosmarin will be: “Why didn’t you pick up the phone and tell the government and the minister what was going on?”