Optus Facing Millions In Claims Due To Dumb Contractor
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A contractor who cut through an Optus fibre optic cable on the Gold Coast could end up being sued for millions by Optus who are facing major payouts to business customers affected by this week’s loss of mobile, landline and Internet services in Queensland.

The problems started when the contractor who was laying pipe for Queensland’s water grid cut the network’s main fibre-optic cable on the Gold Coast yesterday, plunging more than a million subscribers into chaos.

An attempt to reroute the downed services via an inland backup network in the town of Stanthorpe failed. The outage had a major effect on airline services, bringing down check-in and baggage handling systems at Brisbane’s international and domestic airport.

Optus spokesman Joshua Drayton said the company was prepared to consider compensation of business customers for loss of vital phone, Internet and payment processing systems. He advised affected customers to get in touch.

Meanwhile the Queensland Government said it wanted to know why a backup system did not prevent the shutdown, which also affected ATM and EFTPOS services.

Premier Anna Bligh said she was “alarmed” that one severed cable could have such a huge impact on the State. She plans to talk to the Federal Minister For Communications, Stephen Conroy, about the incident.