Australian Eurovision fans were more than excited to watch the contest last weekend and vote for their favourite country.
The only problem was that the overwhelming majority of their votes didn’t register.
A glitch in the SBS voting line caused a system meltdown – leaving many of the few votes received from Australian numbers unregistered.
Cases of fans from overseas being unable to vote for Australia were also reported.
Disgruntled viewers who stayed awake throughout the night of the grand final took to social media to complain about uncounted text messages. Users posted screenshots of error messages and notifications that voting had closed, which they received as replies from MNET, the service provider collaborating with SBS.
Neos Kosmos contacted the broadcaster to investigate the complaints – with SBS suggesting that the problems arose because some of the voters hadn’t activated premium services on their phones.
“SBS worked with MNET, a local premium service provider, which acted as an aggregator of phone and text votes for the Eurovision Song Contest,” the TV network said.
“Digame is the European Broadcasting Union’s mobile operator that oversaw the televoting solution for all participating countries. Both servers are investigating the matter.”
