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Third night of #Floptus World Cup tech trouble

The CEO apologised and vowed to fix it, but fan fury persists after 3rd night.

FIFA World Cup fans have been subjected to a third night of troubled streaming of the action from Russia through Optus.

On Friday night Optus Sport on Twitter answered early enquiries suggesting users troubleshoot by “tapping the video to display the settings wheel and changing the quality to high.”

It soon became evident the issue was far more widespread. By Saturday morning via several media went into bat on behalf of angry users.

An Optus spokesman said the crashes were the result of  a high number of users logging on and signing up -the same saga that sent Game of Thrones return crashing for Foxtel last year.

Crucially, the problems continued on Saturday night during the Socceroos match.

Saturday 11pm:

More media reports savaged the telco on Sunday, prompting a pledge from CEO Allen Lew.

Sunday 7pm:

But last night there were still issues.

Sunday 10pm:

The telco has been savaged on social media with a #Floptus hashtag trending.

Optus is charging $15 for the FIFA World Cup coverage but is yet to offer refunds.

10 Responses

  1. I usually don’t have any issues with my Fetch TV Gen2 box, but last night I noticed not only could I not get Optus Sport channels, every second channel of the Fetch TV/Foxtel channels was black screen. So, I’d say for some subscribers it wasn’t just the Optus Channels that had issues.

  2. It would be interesting to know if there are specific trouble spots for this Optus streaming coverage or if it is widespread, the latter would suggest an Optus server problem though the variable quality of broadband will makes things worse for some users. Its interesting to consider that BBC iPlayer apps in the UK is streaming 29 WC games in 4K UHD HDR at 50 frames a second, although you would have to be quick as only a limited amount of viewers can participate, it is part of a trial for future broadcast upgrades.

  3. “tapping the video to display the settings wheel and changing the quality to high.”
    What! it’s usually the other way round,lower the quality…..?

  4. Well this is Australia after all with pretty rubbish internet – I actually had someone from NASA come up to me after a presentation at the NAB show in Las Vegas in April and asked me how we even managed to stream anything – that’s how bad our internet reputation is.

    It does raise the question of why a Telco is allowed to purchase the exclusive rights without proving that they have the necessary infrastructure to delivery – Oh wait, I know; FIFA and FFA don’t care as long as they get their big bag of cash for the rights. Surely someone needed to have done due diligence on the submission from Optus.

    There will be some people; like Telstra; that will be very upset with this situation as the it does justify that an anti-siphoning list is needed; maybe we should be looking to put more back onto the list so that it is always on Free to Air or subscription TV. Imagine if Telstra only…

    1. speak for yourself….
      I’ve had fibre since 2010 – I actually paid $600 odd to be connected…

      unlimted internode fibre – no problems downloading 100Mbps for hours at a time….

      wait – you use either telstra – or sign up to cheap stuff like TPG and get crap speeds.
      so “everyone” must have crap speeds.

      you get what you pay for.

      1. No need to be so rude to @johntv, he said what is a very common sentiment among the community, you must notice all the commentary in the media about slow speeds, no internet at all, faulty, etc. I live in the inner city of Sydney, am with Telstra – NBN is meant to be coming in July – and it slows down so much after 6pm sometimes to the point of a show becoming unwatchable because of all the buffering. Last night I was streaming on iView through Apple TV and couldn’t even open a newspaper article on my laptop, phone or tablet at the same time. The modem, cables and devices are not faulty, it’s the internet. You’re very lucky you have no problems with the internet in Australia, don’t discount the large contingent who do.

      2. I live in the middle of Sydney city and have Telstra and the Optus Sport app has continuously crashed and/or delivered a poor streaming experience.
        To have a view that Australia’s internet is anything other than terrible would mean you’re lying to yourself, or are unaware of what good infrastructure looks like.

    2. @johntv, Optus were not sold the exclusive rights, they were bought by SBS who on sold to Optus in exchange for 1 EPL game per week. Please research before posting nonsense.

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