Morgan Stanley diverts phones to dodge Optus woes
Morgan Stanley had to divert its local phones overseas to receive incoming calls thanks to telecommunications provider Optus’ massive outage on Wednesday.
Bankers and traders arrived at the investment bank’s offices in Sydney’s Chifley Tower to partially unresponsive phone lines, insiders told The Australian Financial Review, after the country’s second-largest telecom operator tackled outages across fixed and mobile phone services.
Morgan Stanley’s Australian bankers and traders were limited to internet services after Optus’ outage left them unable to receive phone calls. AP
While working internet services enabled Morgan Stanley’s bankers to communicate through computers, staff lost incoming calls on their mobiles in the early hours of the local trading session.
Bankers who used their personal mobiles for business calls hoped to be reimbursed.
A spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley said Australian services had been fully restored by the afternoon.
“We quickly put in place an alternative solution to enable communication with clients,” she said.
Investment banks, particularly their sales and trading departments, are highly reliant on functioning telecommunications as they place billions of dollars worth of trades. Traders, too, require super-fast internet via high-touch electronic trading platforms.
While Optus’ woes proved inconvenient, Morgan Stanley had been able to circumvent the outage and do business. By about 1pm AEST, Optus said some of its services across fixed-line phones and mobiles had been restored.
Optus said the outage was not due to a cyberattack, quelling any immediate fears of last year’s hacks that plagued the reputations of the telecom and separately health insurer Medibank.
Morgan Stanley has been a
Read more on afr.com
