CANBERRA, Nov. 10 (Xinhua) -- Australia's second largest telecommunications company, Optus, has joined its biggest competitor in promising refunds for disappointed National Broadband Network (NBN) customers.
Optus announced on Thursday night that customers who signed up for the NBN, Australia's troubled national open-access data network, and did not receive the Internet speeds they were promised would be eligible for refunds.
It came a day after Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications company, announced it would refund 42,000 NBN customers who experienced slow Internet speeds.
The companies were put under pressure to offer refunds after an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) concluded that promised download speeds of up to 100 megabits per second (mbps) "could not be achieved in real-world conditions."
The ACCC threatened every telecommunications company offering NBN services with legal action if they did not offer refunds.
Optus confirmed that the company was "working with the ACCC" to complete the refunds.
"Optus is taking action to provide appropriate remedies to those customers where it has been confirmed that the underlying NBN service cannot deliver the speed they signed up for," a company spokesperson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Friday.
As Telstra did, Optus said that access issues for fibre to the node (FTTN) and fibre to the building (FTTB) were responsible for the slow speeds.
"This is an industry-wide issue," Optus chief executive, Allen Lew, told reporters on Thursday, predicting that every company offering NBN service would have to provide some level of refunds.
"We will make sure our customers get the service that they have purchased and if not we will look at providing the appropriate remedies for them on an individual and case-by-case basis."
TPG, another large telecommunications company, said it was considering the ACCC's stance and would enter discussions with the consumer watchdog "in the coming days."
Optus has more than 350,000 NBN customers compared to more than 800,000 with Telstra, according to the ACCC.
