Optus will not refund its nearly 10 million customers after its entire network collapsed for more than nine hours on Wednesday, with the teleco under growing fire for a lack of transparency.
Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin confirmed the company would not be paying back customers affected by the national outage, which brought critical transport and health services to a halt, because most would get “less than $2” in compensation.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said it was more than reasonable that people expected a refund and urged businesses to keep their receipts to show proof of economic loss.
“Australians expect providers to compensate them when things go wrong and I think that’s reasonable,” Ms Rowland told the ABC.
“There is a reasonable expectation from Australians that if they are done wrong, if there is an outage of this nature that causes them to suffer loss in some way – be that economic or otherwise – that corporations will do the right thing by them.”
“I urge that in every case from corporate Australia, including this one.”
The federal government has launched an official inquiry into the blackout to investigate how telecommunications providers can better handle major service disruptions.
Speaking on ABC, Ms Rowland said brief communication from Optus left people “desperate” for information and criticised the teleco for not speaking out earlier.
“I made it clear from the outset that consumers were clearly frustrated with the lack of information,” she said on Thursday.
“Australians are reasonable people. They understand that things need to be resolved and that may take some time, but the key issue here was getting some understanding of the nature of the problem, how long it may take and what the impacts would be.”
Despite reports of a service outage emerging in the early hours on Wednesday Optus’ chief did not speak to any media until appearing on the ABC at about 10.30am.
Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones said it was “bizarre” Ms Bayer Rosmarin did not make herself more widely available considering the critical nature of the outage, which was blamed on a technical network issue.
“You’d have thought coming off the back of the previous data breach where they were facing similar calls from customers to explain exactly what was going on, this simply wasn’t good enough,” Mr Jones told ABC.
“My colleague Michelle Rowland was out there trying to fill the gaps. It’s not her job as the Minister to explain what’s going on inside of a company. It’s the company’s job to do that.”
Ms Bayer Rosmarin has denied claims of poor communication and said the company was “very, very sorry” for customers and services impacted by the outrage.
“We know how important it is for all our customers to be connected, and we have been working tirelessly since the outage started to restore services for our customers.”
The government will begin drafting a terms of reference for a post-incident review that aims to determine how it can assist large telecommunications providers to “improve the post-outrage process”, according to the communications minister.
Industry watchdog the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will also probe into Optus’ compliance with rules around emergency calls following reports customers were unable to dial Triple Zero on their landlines.
The Greens have pushed to establish a senate inquiry into the service outage amid concerns Optus’ management failed to be upfront with the public.
Greens communications spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said the party would “push to get the answers that are needed” through an inquiry process and called the lack of transparency from the national provider a “disgrace”.
