Optus outage affects some Telstra customers; services ‘gradually being restored’

Key Points

• Optus has suffered a nationwide outage, leaving millions of its customers without phone or internet services.
• Hospitals, businesses, train services and more had been impacted by the outage.
• Optus said its services had been restored late on Wednesday afternoon.

Optus has confirmed its services have been restored, more than 13 hours after a nationwide network outage began.

The network dropped out at about 4am AEDT on Wednesday, with more than 10 million customers unable to connect to the internet or make or receive calls for much of the day.

“We know that customers rely on our services, which is why the whole team at Optus has been working hard to fix this.

Earlier in the afternoon, Optus confirmed that some of its mobile and fixed-line services were “gradually being restored” following the outage.

It said that it may take a few hours for all services to recover.

“Different services may restore at different sites over that time,” the telco said in a post on X.

“We reiterate our apology to customers for the nationwide service outage that has occurred this morning.

Optus also said it was aware some mobile phones were having issues connecting to emergency services on 000, having earlier said fixed line services were being affected.

Some Telstra prepaid customers reported experiencing service issues, as an influx of Optus users tried to sign up in the wake of the nationwide network outage.

A Telstra spokesperson said they were unable to process online pre-paid recharges, but that other methods of recharging were working normally.

“While we get this sorted, customers will continue to have use of their pre-paid service,” the spokesperson said.

The Greens have called for a federal parliamentary inquiry to examine what led to the Optus outage.

“We need to make sure that all Australians have access to affordable and reliable internet and telecommunication, because otherwise, life as we know it stops, and that’s what Australians right around the country experienced this morning,” Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young told reporters in Canberra.

“This is not a small matter, and the parliament will have to look at what Optus can and should be doing, what they knew, how this failure happened, and there needs to be consequences of this type of outage.”

Hanson-Young accused Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin of a lack of accountability in her response, after she only did one media interview in the hours after the network went down.

“Australians are rightly angry today that their phones are not working, their internet is dead, and the CEO of Optus has phoned it in. Not good enough,” she said.

“This is not the first time that Optus have not been upfront with customers in a timely manner.”

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said Optus needed to be transparent with customers.

She said the millions of Optus customers affected were experiencing a “high level of anxiety and frustration”.

“Consumers will be making judgements about the quality of service that they receive in a competitive market,” she told reporters in Sydney.