Optus to face inquiry, review on outage amid calls for compensation
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More news: Optus is facing a Senate inquiry, a separate government review and potential compensation claims for yesterday's outage, which left millions of Australian customers and businesses without mobile phone or internet coverage for more than 12 hours.
Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has been criticised for not providing adequate detail on the cause of the outage, which has been linked to a network fault.
What they said: "There is no soundbite that is going to do it justice, so we want to really bottom out the root cause and when we have that very clear and in a digestible form, we will be forthcoming," Bayer Rosmarin told the Australian Financial Review.
"If you’re a small business that’s lost a day’s takings because your phone system wasn’t working, then you’re going to be asking those hard questions. So compensation absolutely has to be on the table," finance minister Stephen Jones told ABC Radio.
Optus half-year earnings slide 13.9%
The news: Optus has posted an almost 14% slide in earnings before interest and taxes as operating costs ate into improved revenues.
The numbers: Optus EBIT fell 13.9% from $164 million in the half year to September 2022 to $141 million in the same half this year. Operating revenue lifted 1.4% year-on year, led by 3.4% mobile service growth but operating expenses — driven by inflated goods, content and energy costs — gained 3.4% and cut into earnings.
The context: The figures came a day after Optus suffered a nationwide outage affecting millions of Australian customers and businesses. In today's update, the telco reiterated plans announced in July to team up with Elon Musk's SpaceX to provide SMS and eventually voice and data via SpaceX’s Starlink satellites.
The source: Optus Media Release
