Optus steadily restores services following nationwide outage

Optus has gradually restored a number of fixed line and mobile services following a nine-hour outage across Australia. 

The carrier’s network went down at 4 am on 8 November with South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas calling it the single biggest telecommunications outage seen in the country. 

However, as of 1 pm, mobile and internet services are gradually returning to normal, with CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin telling 3AW radio that the "path to restoration" was underway. 

"Unfortunately, it was a nationwide outage ... [we are] very, very sorry that this occurred, we know how important it is for all our customers to be connected, and we have been working tirelessly since the outage started to restore services for our customers," she said. 

The nine-hour outage hit swathes of customers across Australia, including those in the public sector, banking, public transport and small businesses. 

The outage also caused some customers to experience difficulty connecting triple zero calls on mobile phones. 

"We reiterate our apology to customers for the nationwide service outage that has occurred this morning," an Optus spokesperson said. "Some services across fixed and mobile are now gradually being restored. This may take a few hours for all services to recover and different services may be restored at different sites over that time." 

Speaking to ABC Sydney Mornings earlier today, communications minister Michelle Rowland said there was a “core network problem that is impacting both [Optus fixed line services, including broadband, [and] also their mobile services”. 

“Optus has said that they are doing everything they can at this stage to identify the faults and to rectify it,” she told host Sarah MacDonald. “But I do appreciate that for your listeners and for consumers right around Australia, this is very frustrating at the moment, and there is a strong desire to have some timeframes about when this might be rectified.”

Also speaking to MacDonald via What’s App earlier, Bayer Rosmarin said she didn’t have more information to give when asked about the system outage. 

According to the website DownDetector, users started reporting issues around 4 am on Wednesday 8 November. The website said that 63 per cent of outages reported were affecting mobiles, with users unable to make or receive calls and texts, while 21 per cent reported mobile internet services were also down.   

Around 17 per cent of those affected reported landline issues. Optus subsidiaries Moose Mobile, Coles Mobile, Spintel, Southern Phone, Dodo and Amaysim have also been affected.   

The outage comes a year after Optus was hit by a major data breach that saw more than 9 million customers' details exposed.