Users began reporting widespread issues with Telstra’s mobile network Thursday afternoon. Update: Telstra has provided further details on the problem, told Kotaku that it apologises for the inconvenience and will be “providing a free data day for all of our mobile customers on Sunday 3 April.“
7:19am: Telstra notes that “the issue started at around 6pm and we started seeing progressive restoration from around 7.30pm. The issue was sporadic so different people were impacted at different times.
“We sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience we have caused again. As a way of saying we’re sorry we’ll be providing a free data day for all of our mobile customers on Sunday 3 April.
“We had a problem that triggered a significant number of customers to be disconnected from the network. Reconnecting them to the network caused congestion. We had a connection problem overseas impacting international roaming customers which then had a flow-on effect domestically.
“The issue is not related to the outage that occurred in early February. The problem that repeated itself was in people reconnecting to the network.
“Following the last event we commenced a major process and engineering review of the network, which includes global network experts, to understand how it occurred, and while the two incidents are not related, we will add the lessons learned from this incident to that review.”
8:48pm: Telstra is “progressively restoring mobile services and anticipates returning to normal soon.” The telco now “believes the incident has impacted a proportion of traffic for voice and data across the country. The cause of the incident is yet to be determined but at this early stage we understand we have had a problem with the part of the network that allows phones to register and therefore make calls and use data. We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused.”
7:15pm: A Telstra spokesperson confirmed that it is “aware of an issue affecting some of our mobile customers who are having difficulty making and receiving calls, and using data.”
“We are looking into the cause of this issue and apologise for the inconvenience this is causing.”
Earlier: Reports of the outage on Telstra’s mobile service began flaring up late this afternoon, hitting its peak around 5pm. The rate at which users were affected is probably best illustrated with this handy graph, courtesy of the tracker Aussie Outages.
The outage has hit users across Australia, with those in capital cities and regional areas equally affected.
Telstra users have reported widespread drop-outs affecting mobile data. #9News https://t.co/rVQrESfjB1
— Nine News Melbourne (@9NewsMelb) March 17, 2016
@M_Simmonds We are aware of an issue affecting some of our mobile customers. We’re working to fix this as soon as possible (1/2)
— Telstra (@Telstra) March 17, 2016
@BeauGiles We’ve received reports of an issue affecting mobile services and are currently investigating. We will provide an update asap
— Telstra (@Telstra) March 17, 2016
@rpy We’ve received reports of an issue affecting mobile services and are currently investigating. We will provide an update asap
— Telstra (@Telstra) March 17, 2016
@Captain__DMan We’ve received reports of an issue affecting mobile services and are currently investigating. We will provide an update asap
— Telstra (@Telstra) March 17, 2016
@haty1 We’ve received reports of an issue affecting mobile services and are currently investigating. We will provide an update asap – J
— Telstra (@Telstra) March 17, 2016
Telstra’s Twitter account is basically an entire wall of the same issue reposted time and time again, which has led to them also accidentally responding to users tagging Telstra just to pile in on the telco.
@kagij We’ve received reports of an issue affecting mobile services and are currently investigating. We will provide an update asap
— Telstra (@Telstra) March 17, 2016
Even Telstra’s Service Status page was unhelpful, being unavailable at the time of writing. Telstra has also posted a blanket notice to all users as of a few minutes ago, hopefully to save them the hassle of people asking why they didn’t have reception.
We are aware of an issue affecting some of our mobile customers. We’re working to fix this as soon as possible. Sorry for inconvenience.
— Telstra (@Telstra) March 17, 2016
We’ll keep you posted as the night goes on. We’ve also reached out to Telstra for comment, and when and if we hear back we’ll let you know what they say.
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Comments
34 responses to “Telstra Mobile Outage Update: Free Mobile Data Day On Sunday April 3”
Its just skynet guys take it easy.
on another note, when alex does “small” articles theyre usually bigger and full of more content than the other journalists.
keep it up buddy! setting the bar higher 🙂
Regional township here, Sussex Inlet NSW south Coast, no issue with mobile reception or landline use
I feel sorry for this person.
eh i dont, because its means she didnt drop them off at the airport or say goodbye when they left home
Might not have been able to? Maybe she was stuck at work? Or, maybe she was in another part of Australia when they left?
just another entitled me me me generation dropkick
wow, wanting to say farewell to your significant other and child before they leave the country is entitlement? You know people pay for a premium service and expect the ‘most stable and reliable network in australia’ to actually be available to them.
When you are a parent, and your partner and child are leaving the country I’m sure you will want to be able to say goodbye to them up until the point the plane is about to take off, I know I do, or maybe im just another entitled me me generation dropkick.
I think he’s referring to whining about it on twitter.
A baby boomer?
Explains why I had to go to wifi to play nursery rhymes for my little bloke. Townsville
I thought it was because i haven’t paid my bill 😛
What? I can’t use my mobile because YOU forgot to pay your bill? Shame on you! :p
That’s a bloody outrage, it is. They better fucking give me 10 years free service.
Been down for me for just about 3 hours now, in southern adelaide. No big issue, just made it easier to do study with out being distracted. But then again I would be a bit peeved if I needed the mobile network for anything important to me at this time.
I look forward to free data day round 2!
Hmm, hope 000 works if some poor buggers need it
That is just a stupid comment to make, the same comment hundreds of people have posted to the Telstra facebook page. Emergency numbers will work regardless as they use whatever network is available.
Excuse me for not knowing. Not everyone is an encyclopedia buddy.
You’ve never noticed that you can take a SIM card out of a phone but are still able to dial 000?
Never needed a phone without a sim. Wouldn’t it still need a carrier to make the connection?
No, as its a regulatory feature of a mobile phone – it needs to be able to dial an emergency service regardless of whether you are permitted to access any network
On a news site, I read a “twatter” quote from someone who claimed his phone was unable to make an emergency call – that’s rubbish. If his phone couldnt make an emergency call even if Telstra’s network was out, it either meant that he was in an area with absolute ZERO connection signal, regardless of whether Telstra was available or not, or he was using a non-compliant handset
Probably made a huge saving on ebay. Cheers for the explanation on the emergency call setup – learning something new every day.
Keyword, available. I had periods of no reception… so I think the concern is valid.
You had periods of no Telstra reception, but you would have still had access to the Vodafone and/or Optus networks. As mentioned, emergency services connect to ANY available network – its not going to refuse to connect you because your mobile provider is suffering an outage
Ah, that answers my other question. Cheers
Sunrise needs to get that info to their journo’s as well someone made the remark that emergency numbers would not of been reachable due to the outage. I heard that and was like wtf why? Unless idiots were calling 000 to report their phones not working which i can totally see people doing.
I don’t know what the trigger is for selecting a different network… but it most certainly did not occur. It would sit there on Telstra with no reception, rather than swap networks. If it’s not showing any reception, I doubt emergency calls will magically work (as you can only be on one network at a time, in most phones).
What kind of handset do you have? Sounds like its non-compliant
I have a Xiaomi handset (never officially released in Australia) and I am with Telechoice (who use the Telstra network, so I was affected by this outage), when the network is no longer available it immediately (OK, after about 1 second when the bars go to 0, then it says ‘no service’, then it) switches over to “Emergency Calls Only” and stays there until it can reconnect to my network. If my non-officially released Asian handset complies with regulations, then surely yours does
BTW – did you actually try to make an emergency call? If you had tried to dial 000 I am pretty sure it would have connected you (again, unless its non-compliant)
Read this
http://www.acma.gov.au/theACMA/calling-the-emergency-call-service-from-a-mobile-phone–faqs
Specifically: Special roaming capabilities of mobile phones when calling 000 mean that when you are out of your service provider’s coverage area but are in another carrier’s mobile phone network coverage area, your call will be carried on the other carrier’s network. However, it is important to realise that if there is no mobile coverage, you will not be able to reach the Emergency Call Service via a mobile phone
If you cant make an emergency call, then you don’t have a signal at all – and that has nothing to do with Telstra’s network not being available
Good old Telstra, keeping the third world internet as popular and relevant as ever
Maybe it’s some grand experiment about seeing how people will react if they don’t have their mobile internet to escape dinner tike conversation?
“Free Mobile Data Day On Sunday April 3”
This will be a good time to test out the mobile network.
Quickly everyone! Netflix your phones, use torrents, play World Of Tanks, see how much bandwidth the mobile network is REALLY capable of.
Haha, yep. I was getting speeds of 180Mbps yesterday over 4G where I am. I can’t wait to download shit just for fun on the 3rd.
So Telstra fuck us over with outages during the week…when I have to use my mobile data…and give us free data on the weekend when I’m at home on my Wifi…
Good Job Telstra! They just can’t quite clusterunfuck it…
I’m going to ask them to let me port out to another provider free of charge before the free data day, it will save them money as this time I’m going to connect all my devices for data downloading unlike last time where I used one and got about 350Gb down in the day. Software load balancing should do it, if not I’ll just my laptop and desktop at the same time….