New outage hits Telstra network

Up to 375,000 of the telco’s NBN and ADSL customers left unable to connect to the internet.

Telstr today suffered a new network outage, with up to 375,000 of the telco’s NBN and ADSL customers unable to connect to the internet.

A spokesman told The Australian an outage hit Telstra’s NBN voice and data services and ADSL services early this morning.

“The majority of services have been restored however we are still experiencing some customer impact,” Telstra said in a statement at 1645 AEST.

“While services are progressively restoring, we are continuing to investigate the cause of today’s issue.”

It’s understood the outage hit up to 350,000 NBN voice and data customers in New South Wales, South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia and 25,000 ADSL customers in South Australia and New South Wales.

The latest outage comes less than 24 hours after the telco’s chief executive Andrew Penn maintained that the Telstra’s core network architecture was exceptionally sound.

Speaking at the American Chamber of Commerce lunch in Melbourne on Thursday, Mr Penn said Telstra had the most robust network in Australia with the widest geographical range. He did acknowledge that despite continued investment in the network it’s impossible to eliminate outages.

“While no operator can guarantee that disruptions will not occur from time to time but what we can do is reduce the likelihood and the impact of them, we are committed to rebuilding the trust of our customers and exceeding their expectations every day,” Mr Penn said.

Telstra is pumping an extra $50 million into its mobile network after a forensic review of its network in the wake of damaging outages earlier this year. The telco is investing $25m into network monitoring and tools and another $25m to improve network recovery time for customers.

While Telstra is trying to get to the bottom of the cause of the latest outage, complaints from some customers about receiving little information from Telstra’s service status page will put further pressure on the telco to lift its game.

Telstra, under previous CEO David Thodey, has endeavoured to change Telstra’s customer service performance and Mr Penn has pointed to customer advocacy as his number one priority.

“We have come a long way but we have so much more to do,” Mr Penn said on Thursday.

Enhancing customer experience is crucial to Telstra future in a competitive market and slimmer margins. Telstra’s reputation as a premium operator relies on its customer advocacy efforts and the latest outage is another example of how difficult managing outages can be as far as Telstra is concerned.

With Supratim Adhikari