Telstra Next G down in Queensland

Engineers address statewide dead zone.

Telstra has confirmed that users of its Next G Mobile network are unable to receive signal in the entire state of Queensland.

UPDATE - Telstra has blamed the outage on a botched network upgrade.

Telstra customers in Queensland began reporting that phone calls were not connecting and that SMS messages were not being sent from around 5:15am.

"Telstra is working to fix issues with some of our radio network controllers in parts of Queensland this morning," Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton told iTnews.

"Some mobile customers in Brisbane, Townsville, the Sunshine Coast and other parts of Queensland may be experiencing difficulties making and receiving calls. We are confident we will have the issue resolved soon."

Unofficial reports claimed that four of Telstra's seven Radio Network Controllers were experiencing faults.

Telstra's Next G networking vendor, Ericsson, had been contacted to help resolve the issue.

Affected Next G users on the Whirlpool Broadband forum expressed some gratitude at the speed of Telstra's response to the issue. Middleton had posted a note on the forum by 8:15am.

"We have a mobile network issue in Queensland and it appears quite widespread," he said. "Info[rmation] is limited at the moment, but as you'd expect, restoration is our priority.

"Apologies for the inconvenience - our teams are working flat out to rectify it."

Until recently, Telstra representatives rarely made themselves known on the popular forum, but after the success of the vendor's more open approach on Twitter, the company has moved to build up its profile on Whirlpool.

Telstra resellers have meanwhile recommended that users attempt to connect on Telstra's older GSM network until the high speed Next G network is back online.

Stay tuned for more...