Telstra to ­review infrastructure after third outage in two months

Telstra has confirmed it is ­reviewing its infrastructure after a third major outage in two months.

Telstra has confirmed it is ­reviewing its infrastructure after being forced to apologise to customers again following a third major outage in two months.

As rival Vodafone offered unhappy Telstra customers a free month’s service to switch, the premium telco blamed a gateway “card failure” for the outage that saw fixed-line and mobile customers unable to make calls.

In the wake of the mass out­ages, Telstra says it is conducting a review into its network, bringing in international experts to examine key infrastructure.

“While we have the leading network in Australia, like any of our global peers there will always be issues that arise in such a large and complex technology environment,” a spokesman said. “We are committed to redoubling our efforts on resilience in the network and part of that is conducting a major review in relation to the outages from last week and February.”

Yesterday’s disruption, Telstra’s third major outage in just two months, began at noon and took more than an hour to ­resolve. Telstra said services in Victoria and Tasmania were the worst affected.

“The disruption, which impacted less than 3 per cent of our mobile customers, was caused by a card failure in a media gateway in Victoria which meant certain calls could temporarily not get through. The media gateway ­allows the calls to connect,” a spokesman said.

“While small, we appreciate the impact this outage had on the customers affected, and we apologise to them.”

The series of outages raises questions about Telstra’s multi-billion-dollar investment in its network infrastructure, after chief executive Andy Penn last year committed to investing more than $5 billion in the ­mobile network over the next three years.

Vodafone moved quickly to capitalise, offering anyone who switched from a rival telco one month’s free access.

“We know how important it is to stay connected, so if you’re having trouble with your network, we invite you to come on over to Vodafone,’’ Vodafone’s director of sales, Ben McIntosh, said.

Yesterday’s problems followed a major outage on March 17 that affected about eight million customers for up to four hours.