Some felt slighted by the Optus CEO’s response to the nationwide network outage. Image: freestocks.org, via Pexels
On Wednesday, a nationwide Optus network outage left millions of people and hundreds of thousands of businesses without cellular, broadband or landline connectivity.
The outage began around on Wednesday 4am AEDT, and fixes to the cell network only began working around noon the same day.
Meanwhile, it took approximately 13 hours for customers to see their broadband and landline connections return.
Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin spoke publicly about the outage, but the cause of the issue was still not specified.
“Until we’ve done a full, thorough, root-cause analysis, we really can’t provide more information,” she said.
“What I can say is that it was a technical network issue, and that our teams have worked very, very hard to get services restored as quickly as they possibly could.”
With many calling for monetary compensation others just hoping to be let out of their Optus contract, the CEO announced that consumer and small business customers would be compensated with an extra 200GB of data.
However, many felt that this was a deeply insufficient response to the severe disruptions caused by the outage, and some felt slighted by the CEO’s response to the situation.
“I’m disappointed that a barber couldn’t do haircuts today,” said Bayer Rosmarin in a televised interview.
“That seems like one of the few things you can do without connectivity.”
The comment was widely criticised by the public, with many feeling that it mocked the business owner and was “out of touch” with the concerns of customers.
The barber in question, Jake Azar, manager of North Sydney Barbers, hit back at the CEO.
“It’s a bit much for her to throw me under the bus when she can’t even do her job,” said Azar.
“If she does her job, I can do my job. But I can’t do my job if she’s incapable of doing her job.”
Azar closed his shop at 12pm on Wednesday, with a lack of EFTPOS connectivity causing him to lose out on payment for his services.
He said about a dozen customers told him they would return to pay with cash from a nearby ATM, but never came back.
“I had a bit of a laugh about what she said, but she needs to take more responsibility,” he said.
“If I do a bad haircut, I have to own that and fix it. If I can do that, she can do that on her end instead of bagging customers.”
Business owners weren’t the only ones affected by the outage.
Hospitals and people trying to access health services were severely impeded by the outage.
While backup SOS services were still available through the cell network, customers with landline-only connections were cut off entirely from communications, including the national emergency line (000).
Optus now faces a Senate inquiry and a government review, and customers are discussing the pursuit of a class-action lawsuit.
