Telstra suffers another outage on its mobile network

UPDATED: Telstra’s mobile network is down in cities across the country as frustrated customers are left without any service.

TELSTRA has apologised after it suffered another widespread network outage with customers reporting complete disruption of mobile service across the country.

On Monday morning Telstra users said their network was down in Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, Hobart, Brisbane and Perth.

A map produced by Aussie Outages showed the problem was affecting a majority of major metropolitan hubs around the country.

On Monday afternoon, Telstra’s group managing director of networks Mike Wright said Monday’s outage was “not related to earlier impacts”, but said the telco was stil unsure of the reason behind the outage.

“Today at around 10:00am a fault in the core of our network caused some problems with connectivity to the 4G layer of our network,” he said.

“That meant all our customers on our network were connecting to the 3G layer, and of course with that big shift in traffic, that had some interruptions in the amount of data the network could carry and also caused some calls to fail and some customers to intermittently lose service.

“From around midday we began to isolate some elements that were problematic in the network … we’re still finding the source of the problem itself, [but] we know what the effect was and were able to isolate some elements to restore service.”

The outage began around 10:00am Monday morning with customers taking to social media to complain of losing mobile service.

Shortly after 11:30am, a Telstra spokesperson told news.com.au the company was still investigating the root cause.

“We are working to resolve an issue impacting some 4G mobile voice and data services nationally which is also causing congestion for 3G services,” the spokeperson said.

“We apologise for the inconvenience and are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. We are still investigating the root cause.

“Calls to 000 will connect over other carriers’ networks where they have mobile coverage.”

Once again, social media lit up with disgruntled mobile users.

So Telstra network is down in Hobart, Sydney, Newcastle, Canberra (me) and the Sunshine Coast. Presumably everywhere else, too?

— Rick Morton (@SquigglyRick) May 21, 2018

Awesome. #Telstra is down. Happy Monday, all. Hope you didn't need to make any calls or stream any... well, anything.

— Leigh :) Stark (@Leighlo) May 21, 2018

have we got a @Telstra outage?

— Jenna Price (@JennaPrice) May 21, 2018

Hey @Telstra everyone in my class including me just got sent into SOS Only on our phones. Any idea why?

— Joseph Shenton (@notjosephs) May 21, 2018

@Telstra Brisbane Northside checking in, no service over here either #Telstra #outage

— Joel Maher (@HezMah19) May 21, 2018

The mobile outage has hit all major Australian cities.

This morning’s nationwide disruption comes just 20 days after a separate widespread issue downed Telstra’s mobile phone connection for two hours.

Following that outage Telstra said the issue was caused by “technical changes” made ahead of upgrades to mobile traffic control equipment in Telstra’s Exhibition Street exchange in Melbourne.

Currently, the social media team is directing customers to check if their address is affected at the Telstra current outages page.

While the page is working from the news.com.au offices in Sydney, plenty of customers on social media are reporting the page is also experiencing problems and is unreachable.

Not only does @Telstra seem to be down but so is their outage page >pic.twitter.com/UvU1DkqKu6

— Sian ⚪ 🔵 (@siandart) May 21, 2018

The NSW police have warned the public that the outage could be impacting people trying to call emergency services. While calls should be automatically connected by another carrier, if you’re having problems you should use a landline where possible, police said.

UPDATE - Outages across the Telstra 3G and 4G network could be impacting people trying to call Triple Zero (000) or the Police Assistance Line (131 444). -- more to come 1/2.

— NSW Police (@nswpolice) May 21, 2018

UPDATE on Telstra outage 2/2 -- The advice we have received indicates Telstra customer mobile phone calls to Triple Zero (000) should automatically be connected via another carrier; however, if you are having problems use a landline. Only call Triple Zero (000) in am emergency.

— NSW Police (@nswpolice) May 21, 2018

UPDATE: At 12:10pm, Telstra said its 4G network was improving.

“Our 4G voice and data traffic volume is improving nationally after we bypassed hardware which had been preventing some customers from accessing the 4G mobile network,” a Telstra spokesperson said.

“3G voice and data volumes are also improving. We are very sorry for the interruption to services, either directly to customers or through business and government services.”

UPDATE: As of 2:50pm, Telstra says its has now returned its mobile voice and data services to normal levels. “We will closely monitor network stability and performance and continue supporting our customers to restore their services,” a spokesperson said.

Originally published as Telstra suffers another outage on its mobile network