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Following the Optus failure last week, the small business ombudsman has called for better treatment of SMEs by the telco.
The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman (ASBFEO) Bruce Billson has called on Optus to provide a “more tailored response” to its significant period of downtime last Wednesday (8 November).
In the aftermath of the Optus outage, Mr Billson has slammed the telecommunication company’s treatment of small businesses as “shabby”.
Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin last week ruled out compensating customers financially, claiming it would amount to approximately $2 a day of lost coverage.
Instead, she said it would provide an additional 200GB of data for eligible small businesses and consumers and unlimited data on weekends for eligible prepaid customers until the end of the year.
“We know that there is nothing we can do to make up for [Wednesday] and what customers want most is for our network to work all the time – which is our number one priority,” Ms Bayer Rosmarin said in a statement.
“But we also want to acknowledge their patience and loyalty by giving them additional data to help during the holidays, when so many people consume more data with friends and family.”
With many retailers and small businesses, including brokers, losing almost an entire day of business due to the outage, Mr Billson said the offer of extra data by the telco is “inadequate” and not a sufficient way to deal with the problem.
Mr Billson commented: “Small businesses rely on telecommunications as an essential service, but they have been poorly served by Optus throughout this event and some have suffered a significant economic cost.
“We reject suggestions by Optus that the loss for a small business is $2 a day. This is what Optus charges for their services, not what the consequences and loss of that service has cost small businesses in lost income and customers.
“More needs to be done to acknowledge this impact on the livelihoods of our small and family businesses with a more tailored response.
“Australia’s 2.5 million small businesses provide jobs for 5.1 million people and employ 42 per cent of all apprentices and trainees in training – nearly double the amount supported by a big business. They deserve respect and not to be treated in such a shabby way by Optus.”
Earlier in the week, The Adviser heard from several brokers that were left frustrated by the outage with many looking to try and contact clients and lenders through alternative methods such as WhatsApp and Messenger.
Lumbini Wekunagoda at Mel Finance Services commented: “I had to inform my offshore team about our phone lines being out of service and suggested they use Skype for communication.
“CBA has been the only institution to inform us of their broker support lines being impacted.”
Fabien Tribe from the Lending Lab said he faced phone issues and had concerns about clients needing his services, but was more concerned for brokers with settlements pending.
“We are nervously waiting to see if we have one or 100 voicemails and what issues are waiting below the surface that we aren’t aware of and can’t action,” he added.
[Related: Optus outage wreaks havoc on brokers]
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