Optus offers customers free data, will 'cooperate fully' with investigations into outage

A federal government investigation and Senate inquiry will look at Optus' nationwide network outage on Wednesday.

More than 10 million customers were affected by Wednesday's outage. Source: AAP / Joel Carrett

Key Points

• Optus customers will be offered extra data for their 'patience and loyalty' in dealing with Wednesday's outage.
• More than 10 million Australians were left without mobile or internet services yesterday.
• Chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said the company will "cooperate fully" with government investigations.

Optus will offer customers a free data package to compensate after the network suffered a lengthy outage on Wednesday, impacting more than 10 million Australians both locally and overseas.

Eligible postpaid customers will be able to add 200GB of extra data to their plans, while eligible prepaid customers will be able to access unlimited data on weekends until the end of the year.

Small businesses disrupted after the outage ground trading to a halt will also be able to take advantage of the deal.

"We know that there is nothing we can do to make up for yesterday and what customers want most is for our network to work all the time," Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said in a statement on Thursday.

"We also want to acknowledge their patience and loyalty by giving them additional data."

What caused the Optus outage?

In her statement, Bayer Rosmarin said that a "network event" had "triggered a cascading failure which resulted in the shutdown of services to our customers".

She added that Optus' engineers were "investigating thoroughly and we will learn from this outage and continue to improve".

Optus to 'cooperate' with investigations

Bayer Rosmarin said the company "welcome[s], and intend[s] to cooperate fully with, the government investigations" into Wednesday's outage.

The federal government announced on Thursday would launch an investigation into the nationwide crash of the Optus network.

Communication minister Michelle Rowland said her department will undertake the review so that the industry can learn from the outage.

"Connectivity is absolutely essential for Australian consumers and businesses, and the impacts of this outage were particularly concerning," she said in a statement on Thursday morning.

"While we welcome that Optus services were restored over the course of the day, it is critical the Government conducts a process to identify lessons to be learned from yesterday’s outage."

Michelle Rowland said her department will identify lessons for the industry to learn. Source: AAP / Bianca De Marchi

She said the failure highlighted that "no network is immune" to large-scale interruptions and it is critical to improve post-outage processes.

Further announcements around the terms of reference and next steps will be made in due course. 

Optus will also face a Senate inquiry over the outage, after a motion moved by Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young passed on Thursday.

"The inquiry will look at what responsibility Optus has to protect the public, not just their profits," Hanson-Young, who will chair the inquiry, said.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has independently started an assessment to investigate Optus' compliance with the rules on emergency calls.

Optus customers and businesses were thrown into disarray after the telco's network dropped out about 4am, preventing people from connecting to the internet or making or receiving calls.

It took more than 12 hours before services were eventually restored.

Customers encouraged to contact Optus for compensation

The telecommunications watchdog is urging small businesses to get in contact with Optus to discuss options for compensation.

"What we would encourage you to do is contact Optus and ... help them understand what the impact was on them and their earnings," telecommunications industry ombudsman Cynthia Gebert said.

"That's the sort of thing that we think you need to tell Optus so they get a sense of what sort of compensation might be the right thing to do for your circumstances."

Gebert said the scale of the outage was unacceptable as it impacted emergency services and hospitals in addition to small businesses and transport services.

Businesses are counting the costs after the nationwide outage ground trading to a halt, as attention turns to compensation and a parliamentary inquiry into what caused the crash.

Close to 10 million Optus customers had their personal information stolen when the company's data system was breached last year.