The recent outage across Telstra networks this week is being highlighted by the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia (COSBOA) as a timely reminder that reliable telecommunications are essential infrastructure for small businesses across the country.
For many small businesses, particularly those reliant on EFTPOS and digital online systems and communications, COSBOA argued that even a relatively short outage can have immediate consequences. This includes disrupted payments, lost sales, interrupted customer service, cancelled bookings and significant operational disruption.
The organisation added that retail, hospitality, accommodation, transport and other service-based businesses are among those most exposed when telecommunications systems fail.
“Small businesses rely on telecommunications to trade, take payments, communicate with customers, manage bookings, coordinate staff and access essential systems. When those services fail, the impacts can be immediate and costly,” COSBOA CEO Skye Cappuccio said
“Small business owners should not be left carrying the cost of failures in essential services they pay for and rely on to operate.”
Cappuccio said there should be a simple and proportionate process for small businesses that have experienced genuine financial loss as a result of the outage.
She said that small businesses should not face unnecessary complexity when seeking compensation for losses caused by failures in essential services, adding that any process should be simple, practical and comparable to the loss experienced.
COSBOA believes small businesses should receive appropriate regulatory relief where they are unable to meet obligations because of significant technology failures outside their control, including where outages affect payroll, reporting, lodgements, payments or other compliance requirements.
The group added that reliable telecommunications are critical infrastructure for Australia’s small business sector.
A report by the ABC, citing an RMIT professor, indicated that this recent outage from Telstra could have an economic impact that runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars.