Optus responds to Federal government investigation over nationwide outage
Optus has responded to the announcement that the federal government will launch an investigation into Optus’ nationwide outage on Wednesday, which saw a reported 10 million customers left without the ability to make calls or use internet.
Communications Minister, Michelle Rowland, has since announced that they will launch an investigation into the matter, though a timeline is yet to be confirmed.
In a statement given to Mumbrella this morning, Andrew Sheridan, Optus Vice President of Regulatory and Public Affairs, said: “Optus looks forward to fully cooperating with the proposed reviews by both the Department of Communications and the ACMA into yesterday’s network outage.
“As a critical infrastructure provider, we understand how important it is to ensure continuity of service and any lessons learnt are likely to be helpful for both Optus and others in our industry.
“We value our customers’ loyalty, and are looking at ways to say ‘thank you’.
“Optus once again apologises to our customers and others that were impacted by the outage.”
The outage is believed to have started around 4am on Wednesday morning and impacted other companies that use the Optus network, including Amaysim, Coles Mobile and Dodo.
Shortly before 6pm yesterday, Optus issued a statement to Mumbrella confirming that the network was back up and running.
“We apologise profusely,” the statement read.
“Our network has been restored and customers should be back online.”
During an interview on RN Breakfast on Wednesday morning, Rowland shut down questions that the outage could be a cyberattack, saying “we don’t have any information on that at this stage and I would be reluctant to speculate on that.”
Meanwhile, Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was unable to provide any update in an interview with ABC Sydney, but insisted there is “no indication that there’s anything to do with cyber at this stage”.
The outage comes just over a year after Optus was forced to notify customers of a cyberattack and “the possible unauthorised access of current and former customers’ information”.
Following the attack, Optus put a stop on all marketing and spend, with Pathmatics and Sensor Tower managing director APAC, Tom Cui, telling Mumbrella, “Optus’ decision to pause its advertising spend on the day of the cyber attack comes as no surprise. With approximately ten million Aussies impacted by the data breach, any proactive marketing activity would’ve been deemed insensitive.”
