Singtel's Optus Sees No Precedent for Large-Scale Outage Compensation

By Stuart Condie

SYDNEY--Singapore Telecommunications-owned Optus has paid 36,000 Australian dollars (US$23,299) in customer compensation following an hours-long Australia-wide network outage but said there is no precedent suggesting that it should make widespread financial reparations.

The chief executive of Singtel's Australian subsidiary on Friday said that Optus had received customer claims totaling A$430,000 in relation to the Nov. 8 outage. Millions of customers including hospitals and government departments lost services for several hours, with many small businesses unable to process payments.

"Should government choose to look into this, we'd love to be part of that conversation. But there is no precedent for telcos or other essential providers covering consequential loss," Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told Australian lawmakers investigating the outage

The outage stemmed from Optus systems' response to a software upgrade at its parent company, Bayer Rosmarin said.

Optus has offered customers additional data as a goodwill gesture. It isn't looking at direct compensation, Bayer Rosmarin said on a Singtel earnings call Nov. 9.

Optus said that it could engage with government on the question of broader compensation, but said that being ruled liable for indirect losses suffered by businesses would have consequences for other sectors and for consumers.

"There is no precedent for compensation being paid by telecommunications providers to all business customers who suffer a loss of business as a result of an outage of the kind that occurred on Nov. 8, either here or overseas," Optus said in its submission to the lawmakers' inquiry.

Asked by lawmakers whether she planned to resign over an outage that prevented 228 calls to emergency services not being connected, Bayer Rosmarin was non-committal.

"It has not been a time to be thinking about myself," she said.

Write to Stuart Condie at stuart.condie@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 16, 2023 20:47 ET (01:47 GMT)

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