Chaos as Optus outage disconnects half of Australia
SYDNEY - For one talkback radio caller, the first sign something was wrong with Australia's second-largest internet provider, Optus, came when her cat's wifi-powered food dispenser failed to serve breakfast at 6:10 a.m. and her pet woke her.), who needs painkillers for a knee injury that prevents him from working, the problem became apparent when he drove 30 minutes to the pharmacist and his electronic prescription could not be filled.
For millions of Australians who could not pay for goods, book rides, get medical care or even make phone calls, a nine-hour near-total service blackout from the company which provides 40% of the country's internet became a lesson in the risks of a society that has moved almost entirely online. "We are now so very reliant, because of COVID, on telehealth and also electronic messaging systems," said Michael Clements, rural chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners.Optus, which is owned by Singapore Telecommunications, gave no explanation for the outage except to say it was investigating it. Most of its services were restored by the afternoon.GOOGL
Small businesses owners told Reuters they either relied on regular customers to pay them back once internet was restored, or gave customers an option to pay cash or come back later.
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