Only hours after Optus chief executive Allen Lew offered an apology for the many problems that have plagued the telco's early World Cup coverage, users again were forced to vent their frustration as another match proved unwatchable due to technical issues.
From the first full night of competition, football fans across Australia found themselves unable to watch matches from the world's biggest sporting event as system crashes and playback errors affected the company's mobile app and desktop site.
Optus has full Australian broadcast rights to the 2018 World Cup — with free-to-air channel SBS able to show Australian matches and a selection of group and knockout games — and charges $15 a month for subscriptions to the streaming service.
On Sunday afternoon, after days of heavy criticism from football fans across the country, Mr Lew apologised "unreservedly to all Australians" citing "unprecedented demand".
"We should have done better, we can do better and we will do better," he said.
"Australians can be assured that this has my personal attention, and the entire network team's attention, and we will solve it.
"We will solve this problem by the end of this evening."
But when it came to kick-off time for the first match of the day, between Costa Rica and Serbia, the same problems resurfaced and even extended to Fetch, Optus's set top box service for TV.
On Twitter, Optus recognised that "some users" were experiencing technical difficulties, and suggested using another app as a workaround.
But that has done little to ease frustrations of football fans unable to watch the game's greatest event.
