Aussie Broadband has apologised for how it communicated a Friday outage that left customers in Victoria and Tasmania without internet access for half the day, just weeks out from new rules for alerting users to outages.
On Friday, Victorian users reported a major outage with the network from 6am and began airing frustrations about a lack of updates from the company.
Aussie Broadband acknowledged the outage on its social media channels around 10am and said Tasmanian customers may also be affected. It took another two hours for the company to communicate that a potential issue had been identified and a fix was being worked on.
“We apologise for the delay in notifying the outage here on Socials this morning, due to a Vic[torian] public holiday the team weren’t available as early as we would normally be,” a company post said.
“But, no excuses, we should have been here sooner and for that we do apologise.”
Aussie Broadband resolved the issue around 1pm.
From November, the Australian Communications and Media Authority expects to have finalised new rules for how telcos communicate outages with customers.
Currently there are no rules for the way telco providers must communicate with customers about outages.
Triggered by the 2023 Optus outage, an upcoming industry standard will be backed by fines and set minimum expectations for communications during major outages and significant local outages.
A draft version defines major outages as being at least 30 minutes and impacting at least 500,000 end users or all the provider’s services in a single state or territory.
A significant local outage occurs when it impacts at least 50,000 services and lasts longer than six hours.
The providers will be required to notify customers of the outage as soon as possible through an app, SMS or email, and communicate to the users and the public as well through channels like social media and its website.
The communications will have to include as much information about the outage as a provider has at the time, including type, cause and estimated time for a fix.
The proposed standard is currently being consulted on but ACMA wants one finalised for major outages by November and in place no later than the end of the year. A standard for significant local outages will be in place by the end of 2025.
Communications minister Michelle Rowland directed the ACMA to develop the standard in August as part of the government’s response to an inquiry into the Optus outage.
“Telecommunications services are essential for participation in modern life, and ensuring that systems and processes are working to support people during stressful outages is fundamental,” she said.
Aussie Broadband was approached for comment.
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