Optus leaves door open for compensation

Tag : Mobile Phone Cable

Optus says it may consider compensating some businesses for theloss of mobile, landline and internet services. A contractor laying pipe for Queensland's water grid cut thenetwork's main fibre optic cable on the Gold Coast on Tuesday,plunging more than a million subscribers into chaos shortly before8am (AEST). An attempt to reroute the downed services via an inland backupnetwork in the town of Stanthorpe failed. Thousands of mobile phone customers, as well as banks, businessesand the check-in and baggage handling systems at BrisbaneInternational Airport were offline for four hours until the GoldCoast fault was fixed. Optus spokesman Joshua Drayton said the company was prepared tofield calls for compensation for loss of vital phone, internet andpayment processing systems.

"We will work directly with our customers regarding compensationand we will look at it on a case-bay-case basis," he told TheCourier-Mail newspaper. Another Optus spokesman Maha Krishnapillai said most services wereback to normal and he urged business people who have sufferedlosses to contact the company.

"We encourage all our business customers to speak to their accountmanager, and they should have an Optus account manager they cancontact, and we definitely want to talk to our customers - smallbusiness and businesses," Mr Krishnapillai told Fairfax Radio onWednesday.

"In terms of other customers, there's a customer service line.We're quite happy to talk to those customers."

In a statement to The Courier-Mail, the contractors carrying outwork on the water grid, Southern Regional Water Pipeline Alliance,said no works by either staff or contractors were involved in thefibre optic cable disruption. But the paper said an aerial photograph appeared to show workersrepairing a large cable in a pipeline trench next to the MolendinarWater Treatment Plant on the Gold Coast. The Queensland government now wants to know why a backup system didnot prevent the shutdown, which also affected ATM and EFTPOSservices.

Premier Anna Bligh said she was "alarmed" that one severed cablecould have such a huge impact on the state, and would be talking tothe federal minister for communications about the incident.

"I think Queenslanders and, frankly, Australians, are entitled toexpect a telecommunications network that can withstand one cablecut," she told reporters in Brisbane. Ms Bligh said no emergency services had been affected, but shewanted answers as to why a backup system did not work.

She said affected businesses were entitled to feel "very angry",but the issue of compensation was a legal judgment for others tomake.