Customers with Australia"s largest mobile network operator, Telstra, are reporting connectivity issues across the country. The issue appears to have started around 12:45pm AEDT and continues to sporadically affect both calls and data across 2G, 3G and 4G services.
Telstra confirmed the outage on their Service Status page (searching via current location only) and through social media channels.
We"ve identified the issue and services are being restored progressively. Thank you for your patience. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.
— Telstra (@Telstra) February 9, 2016
Sources have indicated to iTnews that a network core switch restart is to blame for the downtime. It is not clear when services will be fully restored.
Update: Telstra have confirmed the outage was due to an "embarrassing human error", and that services have been largely restored. The outage had affected a significant number of customers on 2G, 3G, 4G, ADSL, and home phone services.
Telstra Outage: @Telstra blames human error for outage. Services restored. Customers may be offered free data. https://t.co/qGj3jZUk89
— 7 News Sydney (@7NewsSydney) February 9, 2016
Telstra said the fault began when a single network node malfunctioned. Engineers then accidentally restarted ten of the nodes, when the network can only handle three or four being restarted at once without affecting network performance. Telstra has suggested customers will be offered free mobile data as compensation for the downtime.
Source: ABC News (AU) & The Age | Image via Aussie Outages