iiNet experiencing nationwide email fault

TPG-owned telecommunications provider iiNet has reported a serious fault in its email service affecting customers across Australia.

"Engineers are investigating intermittent delay in receiving emails," iiNet said on its network status page.

"Engineers are continuing to address mail platform issues. Updates will be provided when available."

The fault is listed as having begun at 7:40am WST on Thursday, with iiNet forecasting that it will end in seven hours' time.

(Image: Screenshot by Corinne Reichert/ZDNet)

TPG did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

iiNet similarly experienced an email outage in May last year that also affected its contact centre services, saying it was caused by a software bug on the storage controllers.

"The root cause of the email problem was a software bug on the storage controllers. A patch from the vendor was supplied to overcome the bug, and all email was 100 percent operational at approximately 6.30pm AEST," iiNet said last year.

Last year's email issues then resulted in so many calls to the contact centre that services were rendered "inoperable".

"iiNet experienced an influx of calls which had a direct impact on iiNet's PABX voice system used to provide phone support. The high volume of calls put the geographical diverse PABX system in an inoperable state," it explained.

"iiNet's voice engineering team were able to restore the system to 100 percent functionality by 7.45pm AEST."

Consequently, iiNet said it had put in place measures to prevent the system from losing its operational capacity again. It is unknown whether the contact centre has been affected by the current email fault.

Along with its seven outages last year, rival telecommunications provider Telstra also experienced intermittent issues with its Telstra Mail service last August, with customers having difficulties logging on and sending and receiving emails.

On Thursday, Telstra also experienced an hours-long outage across fixed-line and mobile services due to a fire at its Chatswood exchange that led to customers' SMS messages being delivered to the wrong people.

"A fire at the Chatswood Exchange in Sydney damaged power infrastructure which impacted 3G and 4G services nationally and some enterprise customers. Customers lost connectivity and were unable to establish a call connection," a Telstra spokesperson said on Thursday night.

"Customers were also unable to log in to some online services including My Account and 24/7. Mobile services were restored from 2:50pm and enterprise services were restored from 3:40pm. A related issue which resulted in SMS messages being incorrectly delivered has been resolved.

"All services, including SMS, have been restored and will return progressively."

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) is keeping track of the privacy and security implications associated with Telstra's SMS issue, a spokesperson told ZDNet.

"The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner is aware of reports regarding the Telstra network issue," the OAIC spokesperson told ZDNet.

"Telstra has notified the OAIC about this incident and their response. We will remain in contact with Telstra as they continue to respond to the situation."