Telstra hit by fresh network outage

A widespread Victorian failure comes just one day after the telco announced a $250m network investment.

Businesses across Victoria have been hit by a widespread Telstra network outage just a day after the telco announced an extra $250 million into fixing its core network.

Business and enterprise customers across the state including Reece Plumbing, Channel 31, Virgin Active, Monash University and more all confirmed they’ve been left without internet access, marking Telstra’s seventh major outage this year.

While Telstra said it was investigating the cause of the disruption it’s understood that the services have been affected by hardware issue at a major Telstra exchange in Melbourne.

“We’re aware of an issue impacting some business and enterprise customers in Victoria. We are investigating the cause and working to restore services as soon as possible,” a spokesman told The Australian.

The outage, while localised in nature, has affected a large number of private and public sector organisations. The disruption is especially galling for corporate customers on the last day of the financial year and comes less than 24 hours after the telco’s boss Andy Penn announced a $250m investment to improve its core network.

He maintained that Telstra’s network was “fundamentally strong” and there had been no increase in the incidence of outages.

“I’m convinced that our network has the best coverage and delivers the best experience,” Mr Penn said on Wednesday.

Mr Penn rejected claims that the telco has underinvested in its network and the impact of the outages were a reflection of much extra traffic the networks are having to carry.

More to come.