Telstra power outage downs BigPond services

A power outage at one of Telstra's data centres shuttered internet services to BigPond customers for up to four hours this morning.

BigPond ADSL customers across Australia began complaining of difficulties connecting to the internet at around 6am today. The telco's support line struggled to cope under the influx of callers, pushing wait times to over an hour.

Telstra confirmed it was experiencing an "unplanned outage" affecting internet services, which a spokesperson later said was related to a power outage at its data centre facility in St Leonards, Sydney.

Wireless data and BigPond TV customers were also affected.

The Telstra spokesperson said all ADSL services were restored at 10am, and advised customers to restart their modems in order to connect to the internet.

The data centre power issues have also affected Telstra's digital services.

Since early this morning customers have been experiencing slow load times and time-outs for MyAccount, 24x7 apps, live chat, online bill payments, prepaid recharge and activation, and purchasing via telstra.com.

"We apologise for the inconvenience and assure you that we are working to resolve this as soon as possible."

Telstra is currently working to restore the online services.

Update 1:50pm:

Telstra confirmed the issue resulted from a failure of the standby unit during planned works on the power system in the St Leonards data centre.

"While the main power source and the majority of services were restored as quickly as possible, there are still an number of applications that we are working to restore," a spokesperson said.

"We are still investigating why the backup power source failed."