Forget tech, compare them to Macca’s. Imagine a service outage that meant Macca’s couldn’t sell you burgers today. You’d shrug and take your business elsewhere.

Kinda yeah but nah, I see this with apps like Duolingo where people bitch endlessly about it, I'm like if you hate it so much just go use another app :| why are you rewarding them with your subscription money if you hate it so much?

But Telcos are regulated by these guys:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Communications_and_Media_Authority

We recently had this requirement (thanks to Optus 🫥) handed to us all:

https://www.acma.gov.au/rules-significant-and-major-outages

If we want to make sure we don't get fined we all agree to implement this rule (despite being a pain in the ass) and all the other rules they set for us

the equivalent would be regulations that Maccas have to agree to in order to sell burgers, so I assume it would be something like food safety standards? https://www.health.gov.au/topics/food-and-nutrition/about/food-standards-and-safety

So if Maccas screw up and violate one of these standards then they are fined and if it was a big enough issue where multiple people died I assume they'd be dragged before the government for a please explain and maybe even shut down until the issue was fixed