“The impact [in customer churn] might be higher than Optus’ cyber incident last year, and the higher cost-of-living pressures coupled with price increases could promote higher than usual churn rates across mobile network operators,” Telsyte principal analyst Foad Fadaghi said. “MVNOs will most likely benefit.”
MVNOs, or mobile virtual network operators, are providers that resell services that run on top of the big telcos’ networks. Brands such as Aldi Mobile and Boost Mobile are Telstra MVNOs, whereas Amaysim, Virgin Mobile, Woolworths and Coles Mobile are among Optus’.
“The key driver for MVNOs has been price and despite the outages, Telsyte believes that consumers will be sticky to low-cost services,” Mr Fadaghi said.
Meanwhile, online product comparison website Finder said it experienced a 200 per cent spike in traffic on Wednesday with customers looking for different mobile plans.
In its messages to customers on Friday morning, titled “We’re very sorry for the outage”, Optus told customers to go to its website and add the extra 200 gigabytes to their plan before the end of the year.
Making it an opt-in offer is likely to reduce the number of customers who take it up, especially as a large percentage of customers don’t use their existing data quotas each month anyway.
The most recent figures from the competition regulator showed most post-paid mobile users use only 14.5 gigabytes each month.
Rather than free data offers, Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Cynthia Gebert has said her office could force payments of up to $100,000 for a business that could prove a loss and up to $1500 for individuals with a claim.
She has urged Optus customers to contact the telco with details of how much they usually earn on a Wednesday and what they earned on the day of the outage.
Head of technology, media and telecommunications at law firm Corrs, James North, said plenty of businesses would be considering their rights to transition to another provider and seek compensation for trading losses.
