Chaos in Australia as internet service provider Optus blacks out
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.
For disability pensioner Chris Rogers, 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.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteNorthwestern UniversityKellogg Post Graduate Certificate in Product ManagementVisitIIM KozhikodeIIMK Advanced Data Science For ManagersVisitIndian School of BusinessISB Digital TransformationVisit «Because of the outage it won't load,» Rogers told Reuters while he was waiting at the pharmacist for the internet to return. «Reception is flat out. It's crazy, I've never seen such chaos.»
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 that provides 40% of the country's internet became a lesson in the risks of a society that has moved almost entirely online.
In the three years to 2022, Australian cash transactions halved to 16% as pandemic restrictions sped up a longer-term trend toward so-called contactless payments, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia. One-quarter of the country's doctor appointments are online or by phone, government data shows.
«We are now so very reliant, because of Covid-19, on telehealth and also electronic messaging systems,» said Michael Clements, rural chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. «The reality is many people have just missed out on care.»
Optus, which is owned
