Angry customers outside Optus store as phones remain down at hospitals

Victoria’s Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas has urged Optus customers to call emergency services from phones on a non-Optus network as some lines remain down at major Melbourne hospitals.

Some Optus services were gradually being restored about 1pm, after customers were unable to make calls or use the internet for at least eight hours on Wednesday due to a major national outage.

Lines have formed outside the Optus store in Melbourne’s Bourke Street Mall.Credit: Chris Hopkins

A spokesperson said it may take a few hours for all services to recover and different services would likely restore at different times. “We reiterate our apology to customers for the nationwide service outage that has occurred this morning,” Optus said.

Thomas said her department had been working closely with the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority [ESTA] throughout Wednesday morning. ESTA partners with Ambulance Victoria, Fire Rescue Victoria, the Country Fire Authority, Victoria Police and Victoria State Emergency Service to provide the state’s emergency response.

Thomas said ESTA could receive calls, but that Optus customers were unable to use their phones to make the emergency calls.

“The challenge is for people seeking emergency care to make sure that they are dialling triple zero from a non-Optus network,” she said.

Phone lines down at multiple Victorian hospitals

The Royal Melbourne Hospital and Royal Women’s Hospital are among dozens of hospitals around the country affected by the Optus outage.

Miriam, who did not want to disclose her surname, spent two hours frantically calling the Royal Women’s Hospital on Wednesday morning after going into labour.

Expectant parents are advised to call midwives at the hospital when they go into labour to receive advice about when it’s best to go to the emergency department.

“We couldn’t get through,” Miriam said outside the hospital as she clutched a TENS machine (for pain relief) that was attached to her back. “It was very stressful.”

Her husband Dean said they eventually decided to drive to the hospital from their Port Melbourne home to be on the safe side – and many others had done the same.

“Now it’s backed up because that happened to a lot of people,” he said. “It’s crowded, but they are doing a good job. We are waiting for a bed.”

The Royal Melbourne Hospital said in a statement that phone lines were down across all services. A code yellow was called at all campuses on Wednesday morning, following the outage, while other services would be provided as normal, the statement said. The Royal Women’s Hospital said it was also unable to take incoming calls.

An Optus shop in Melbourne’s inner north notifies customers of a major outage around Australia.Credit: Max Walden

Epworth, the state’s largest not-for-profit private hospital group, said the Optus outage was affecting inbound and outbound landline calls to the hospital. “For urgent inquiries only, please visit our website,” they said.

The Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre said the outage was affecting all incoming calls.

All Northern Health campuses are also affected, including the Northern Hospital Epping, Broadmeadows Hospital, Bundoora Centre, Craigieburn Centre, Kilmore District Hospital and Victorian Virtual Emergency Department.

Ramsay Health Care, which operates 73 private hospitals and day surgeries across Australia, said its phone lines were down as a result of the Optus outage.

Optus also released a statement confirming its landlines could not call triple zero.

Customers arrive outside Optus store

There have been heated scenes outside the Optus store in Bourke Street mall in Melbourne’s CBD as waves of customers questioned staff on when their service would return.

The Age witnessed at least two Optus customers in heated exchanges with staff - in one case a man stuck up his middle finger and yelled obscenities at Optus staff.

Many customers cut off from the internet hoped staff at the brick-and-mortar stores may have more information, but staff said they couldn’t tell when the service would return and directed them to public phones and places with public Wi-Fi.

Most people were calm but concerned, including international students Ranish Kromodoyo, 22, and Anya Absalom, 21, who told this masthead they had important assessments due by midnight and were without lights in their apartment because they had Wi-Fi controlled lights connected to a Google Home device.

“Just a few years ago people wouldn’t have considered it a massive thing when the internet went off,” said a bemused Kromodoyo, who uses Optus for NBN at home and for a mobile service.

“But now our TV, our phone, the assessments [are affected]… I can’t contact work.”

Absalom said she had tried to connect to Wi-Fi in the Optus store, but it would only load the Optus website, and she was hoping her education institute wouldn’t penalise her and other students for submitting assignments late if the service wasn’t restored by midnight.

Ranish Kromodoyo and Anya Absalom have been affected by the Optus outage.Credit: Chris Hopkins

South Yarra man Tim Mulgrew also tried to get answers at the city store.

He said he was unable to make a meeting with friends this morning and couldn’t contact them to say why. He was concerned they may have panicked as he had been unwell lately. “I just felt a bit anxious that I couldn’t let them know,” he said.

The Optus store put extra staff on the door to speak to the influx of people. “It’s been a bit of a rough one today,” one staff member was heard saying.

Severe delays on Melbourne’s train network

Rail commuters suffered major delays across the metropolitan network after all services were stopped early on Wednesday morning, but most lines were restored and experiencing good service by early afternoon.

Metro Trains said a problem linked to the Optus outage prevented the control centre from communicating with trains on the network and stopped trains from running from before 5am. Services resumed shortly after 6am.

Metro Trains chief executive Raymond O’Flaherty apologised to passengers for travel delays and thanked people for their patience while trains returned to the normal timetable.

“Our engineers worked quickly to rectify the issue and we were able to resume trains shortly before 6am,” he said in a statement.

Ridesharing operator Uber experienced a surge in demand on Wednesday morning as a result of the train delays. Some customers were charged double their usual fare.

VCE chemistry exam went ahead

The Victorian government has multimillion-dollar contracts with Optus, which includes the Education Department and the Department of Justice and Community Safety, the service responsible for sending emergency alerts.

Hundreds of students were advised their VCE chemistry exam would go ahead as normal despite disruptions to the communication and transport network.

A spokesperson for the education department said VCE chemistry was the only year 12 exam scheduled to be held on Wednesday.

“The VCAA [Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority] will work with metro schools to support students impacted by travel delays,” they said.

Eftpos payments affected

Business owners reliant on the Optus network have been unable to accept eftpos payments from customers.

Melbourne business owners also had to grapple without phone lines and in some cases case access to their payment systems on Wednesday.

Theo Raussos, owner of The Quarter - a cafe in Degraves Street - said his business was only able to stay open this morning because a single staff member was not an Optus customer, and the cafe was able to hotspot its card payment machine off that staff member’s phone.

Theo Raussos had just switched his business from Telstra to Optus. Credit: Chris Hopkins

“They [the staff member] got us out of trouble today, otherwise we would have closed,” he said.

“He only came to work at 8am so between 7 and 8am I couldn’t take any [non-cash] payment. But because the trains were down there was [almost] no one here,” he said.

Raussos said he had only recently switched from Telstra to Optus due to frequent drop outs.

“I thought Optus had a better back up system. I didn’t expect this. It’s huge.”

The Commonwealth Bank said its terminals, ATMs, branches and apps were still online, but their service centres were unable to receive calls.

What it means for our subscribers

The Optus outage has triggered a service disruption to some subscribers of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

Unfortunately, the outage means our contact centre is currently unable to take any phone calls. If you need contact us, please visit help.theage.com.au, help.smh.com.au, help.watoday.com.au or help.brisbanetimes.com.au and click on the “submit a request” button.

Additionally, the outage has also affected many newspaper deliveries today, resulting in a number of late deliveries. If you haven’t received your newspaper, please send us a request and we’ll credit your account as soon as possible.

You can also keep up to date on the Optus outage via our live blog here.

With Gabrielle Costa and Caroline Schelle

Our Breaking News Alert will notify you of significant breaking news when it happens. Get it here.