The announcement came at the same time as a scheduled media call with the Optus chief executive. Mr Lew said it was important that fans were offered “a failsafe back up". He conceded the issues would affect the company’s reputation but was confident it could bounce back. "I think there is no doubt this has adversely affected the Optus brand,” he said. “We believe the brand is stronger than just one event over three days, we will recover and show Australia we can be a credible multimedia company.”

Mr Lew said Optus should have been able should to anticipate the audience demand better than it had. “But we obviously did not,” he said. Mr Lew said it would not be appropriate for him to say whether the move to put games on SBS was part of his discussion with Mr Turnbull. Earlier on Monday the telco stopped short of offering refunds to customers, but made 'FetchMini' set top boxes available for free for 12 months to affected users through its retail stores. That strategy ran into its own problems, with customers taking to social media to complain of stores running out of stock.

Mr Lew made a similar guarantee to the one he offered the Prime Minister in an interview with Fairfax on Sunday, however users continued to complain of streaming outages that night. Optus confirmed that customers attempting to watch the Costa Rica v Serbia match encountered problems, but says they were resolved by the time the night's second match began. SBS has stepped in to simultaneously broadcast World Cup games for the next two days. Credit:AP The issue was also raised in Parliament, with Federal Labor MP Stephen Jones attempting to pin the blame for the outages on the Coalition's cuts to the SBS budget in 2014. Optus secured rights to the World Cup through a sub-licensing deal with SBS in 2016. But its coverage of the world's biggest sporting event in Russia has been beset by technical difficulties.

The carrier has the exclusive rights to the entire tournament while SBS is screening all Australian games as well as some group games and finals on free-to-air television. SBS chief executive Michael Ebeid said on Monday the broadcaster had been unable to afford to secure the entire rights following budget cuts in recent years. He said if Optus did not resolve the issues soon, his network would look to pick up some more games. "I think if Optus continues to have problems then we might have a conversation about how we can help them further in terms of putting some of those games on our channels; we're obviously able and willing to do that," he told radio station SEN hours before the deal was announced to do just that. Asked if 48 hours would be an acceptable time frame he said: "I think you're right. Maybe even less, maybe even 24 hours. I think they'll need to take a good hard look at where they're at in terms of fixing the problem.

Loading "As I say, from the conversation I've had with Optus, they sound very confident that it's down to a very small number of users. Obviously they had some issues over the weekend particularly on the Saturday night, which I know they worked around the clock on Sunday to address. Optus again apologised on Monday, with a spokesperson saying the technical team was "working around the clock to ensure that we are delivering an excellent broadcast service to all Optus Sport viewers regardless of the platform they are using to enjoy the tournament". The company believes most of the issues have been suffered by people using Apple devices, and on other broadband networks besides its own. Optus made coverage available to anyone willing to pay for it, instead of limiting access to its own mobile and fixed line customers.

FFA has been very disappointed by the technical problems which have so affected the FIFA World Cup coverage by Optus Football Federation spokesman The Football Federation of Australia (FFA) noted the broadcast deal was with the sport's global governing body but said it was receiving regular updates from both Optus and SBS. "Like all football fans in Australia, FFA has been very disappointed by the technical problems which have so affected the FIFA World Cup coverage by Optus," an FFA spokesman said. Mr Ebeid said he was also hopeful Optus would resolve the problems. "Sunday night was significantly better for Optus, a number of people affected was considerably less, nonetheless it did upset quite a few fans and no one wants that. I know the Optus team is working around the clock to fix the technical issues they've got," he said.