Optus National Outage Affects Millions Of Customers

Australians woke up to one of the largest telecommunications outage this morning with the Optus, the second largest telecommunications company in Australia facing a major outage.

Major internet and mobile provider Optus is experiencing an outage across the country.

About 10 million customers have been affected. And roughly 400,000 businesses are being impacted too.

Optus is still trying to figure out what has caused a major outage which has impacted up to 10 million customers and sent multiple hospitals, businesses and transport networks into chaos.

Optus chief executive officer Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told the media shortly before 11 a.m., that they were still trying to figure out what had caused the issue.

Businesses are unable to allow customers to make EFTPOS payments using terminals that use the Optus network.

People who are customers of mobile providers which use the Optus network are also impacted. Optus NBN is also affected.

The Australian Department of Home Affairs says the outage has impacted “phone lines, mobiles and some web services for the Department of Home Affairs and Australian Border Force”.

All major hospitals in Melbourne have also been impacted, including Victoria’s Virtual Emergency Department.

Northern Health, which manages hospitals in the city’s outer north, reported phone lines into its campuses were down and apologised for the inconvenience.

All of Melbourne’s train services stopped temporarily due to a communications outage on Wednesday morning, and Metro Trains said it was unable to rely on its back-up system which uses the Optus mobile network.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland held a press conference a short while ago.

Ms Rowland said “My understanding is that this is a fault deep in the core. The core network basically encompasses everything from routing to electronics. So it is a fault that is quite fundamental to the network. But my understanding, having just recently spoken again to the CEO, is that a number of problems have been identified and that Optus continues to work on this.”

New Malaysia Herald will provide an update as more information becomes available.

UPDATE :

Some Optus customers have had their services restored.

But the company says it could still be a while before everyone is back online.

Facebook Comments

author avatar
Azizi Khan
Azizi Khan lives in Melbourne, Australia building a world class digital bank. A banking and finance specialist he has spend more than two decades in Australia. With a background in regulatory reporting, AML/KYC and financial technology, Azizi regularly provide consulting services to financial institutions and government agencies. With a keen interest in digital technologies, startups and digital media, Azizi founded New Malaysia Herald in Melbourne Australia to provide a new all encompassing global Malaysian news. Azizi is a Senior Member of Financial Services Institute of Australia (FINSIA).

Latest articles

Related articles