Optus customers remain without service 12 hours after connection ‘restored’

Some Queensland Optus customers say they are still affected by a network outage on Thursday, despite the telco insisting the issue has been resolved.

More than 90,000 Optus customers across Brisbane and other parts of Queensland reported issues with their NBN internet connections as early as 4am on Wednesday, which in some cases included cutting off access to Triple Zero calls.

Optus put the issue down to a “network server failure” at its Brisbane exchange in Rochedale, which meant customers with landlines connected through the NBN were unable to make Triple Zero calls from their home phone.

Some Optus customers said they were still being affected by outages in Brisbane on Thursday.Credit: Renee Nowytarger

The telco apologised for the disruption and said technicians were working “as quickly as possible to fully restore connectivity for all Optus NBN customers”, with a spokesperson telling this masthead services would be restored as of 4pm on Wednesday.

Later that evening, Optus said NBN services in Brisbane and affected parts of Queensland had been fully restored.

But some customers said they were still without connection on Thursday morning, and have reported difficulties contacting the telco for support.

One customer told this masthead they received no information about the outage from the NBN or Optus, and spent more than half an hour on hold to the provider.

“After 24 hours, my messages are still not answered. Absolutely nuts after all the controversies surrounding the telco. Time to switch,” they said.

Another customer who works from home said they had to finish work at 2pm due to a full outage, after four “intermittent” outages in the hours before.

“Cost me $300 of lost revenue. Also, their backup internet via 4G didn’t work either, only 5G was working. Have now moved my NBN and mobile to Telstra.”

Optus said “voice over internet phone calls, via a customer’s NBN broadband connection, may have been affected if the customer has an older modem without 4G or 5G back-up”, and told affected customers to turn their modem off, unplug it from the wall, then turn it back on if their NBN did not automatically reconnect.

A Fortitude Valley resident said they had tried that “more times than I care to think about”, and expressed frustration at Optus’s customer service team.

In a statement on Thursday, Optus said it was monitoring the network in Brisbane and Queensland, but insisted NBN services were restored on Wednesday evening.

Customers who were still experiencing issues with their NBN connection were advised to call the telco’s customer service team on 13 39 97.

The network failure is the latest to devastate the telco after an outage on September 18 prevented 605 customers from reaching Triple Zero for more than 14 hours in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The outage was later linked to three deaths.

Eleven days later, almost 5000 Optus customers in the Illawarra region of NSW could not contact emergency services for more than nine hours.

Last week, more than 14,000 Optus customers in Melbourne’s south-east were unable to make calls or use mobile data, with calls to emergency services also affected.

A spokeswoman for Health Minister Tim Nicholls said the Queensland government was closely monitoring the situation and was working with the Queensland Ambulance Service.

Optus said there had been no reported Triple Zero call failures during this week’s outage.

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