Mobile outage outrage for Telstra customers

Telstra suffered a nationwide outage last night with customers unable to access data or mobile services.

Telstra suffered a nationwide outage last night with customers unable to access data or mobile services for the second time in two months.

Frustrated customers took to social media to express their dissatisfaction with the service.

The company did not detail a cause last night but a representative said at 9pm: “We are progressively restoring mobile services and we anticipate returning to normal soon.

“The cause of the incident is yet to be determined but at this early stage we understand we have had a problem with the part of the network that allows phones to register and therefore make calls and use data.

“We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused.”

It’s understood about half the company’s mobile network was affected.

Yesterday’s problems appeared to affect customers across the country, with users complaining on social media they weren’t able to access data or make calls.

The news follows a massive outage in February in which customers all over Australia lost mobile access for hours.

Telstra blamed that outage on an “embarrassing human error” after a core node was knocked offline.

The telco, which has about 16.7 million mobile users, later offered a “free data day” the following Sunday as an apology for the interruptions.

When the last outage hit, ­Teresa Corbin, chief executive of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, said that given the size of Telstra’s network, a large number of customers would have been affected.

“A short outage may not be catastrophic but it has a significant impact on business,” she said.

She added that the scale of disruption not only highlighted how important connectivity had become to users, but also the need to look at telecommunications as an essential service.

“There’s a need to consider whether we need a national roaming strategy that provides basic connectivity in an emergency,” she said.