Businesses across Benalla were struck by the Optus outage on Wednesday, November 8.
The telco company faced a widespread mobile and internet outage from 4am, affecting over 10 million customers across Australia.
From 1pm, customers slowly began to receive access to internet and mobile phone services. However, for some businesses, the damage was already done.
Makadde Male, the owner of Cake Makers Daughter café on Nunn St, said her business was with Optus and had to turn to cash-only sales during the outage.
“Our internet is with Optus, which is connected to our point of sales system, which was out for the whole day,” she said.
“We definitely lost business today, unfortunately. It’s happened a couple of times now, but I’d say this is the most severe one.”
The Communication Workers Union, which represents telecommunications workers, said the outage was an “absolute disgrace” after it left many people relying only on landlines without emergency help, especially after Optus announced over 200 job cuts in the past two months.
“When you repeatedly slash jobs and outsource critical services to contracting companies — this is what happens,” national assistant secretary James Perkins said.
“Australians deserve better than to have one of the major national carriers leave them in the dark for hours, with no answers.”