Optus outage: 20% of complaints to ombudsman were from small business

An Optus network outage that left millions without phone and internet service sparked a flurry of complaints to the industry watchdog as customers sought credits, discounts and an apology.

Consumers lodged 14,671 complaints between October and December 2023, an increase of more than 13% compared with the previous quarter.

But the data collected by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman also showed complaints dropped nearly 18% compared with the same period in 2022.

The Optus outage in November, which left more than 10 million customers without phone and internet access for up to 14 hours, was behind an influx of complaints.

The watchdog received more than 900 complaints about the incident, 20% of which were from small businesses.