Optus hit by widespread network outage

Optus suffered a widespread outage of its mobile and internet services on Friday, with users in cities across Australia experiencing problems for several hours.

Customers started complaining of service issues across the country's east coast just before 10:30am AEST on Friday.

Ookla’s Downdector service showed spikes in outage reports in Sydney and Brisbane, which are both under lockdown, as well as Melbourne and Canberra.

The telco’s website, including network status page, and app was also briefly down.

Optus confirmed the outage at just after 11am, and said it was working to restore the impacted services as soon as possible.

“Optus is aware of an outage that may be impacting Optus services. We are aiming to restore these services as a priority,” it said on Twitter.

“We thank customers for their patience and will provide an update as soon as possible.”

Optus told iTnews at 2:30pm on Friday that while “fixed, 4G and 5G services have been restored”, some 3G users may still be experiencing issues.

All services were restored by Saturday.

“Following an incident yesterday which caused some Optus customers to experience service issues, all fixed, 3G, 4G and 5G services have been restored,” a spokesperson said

“Keeping customers connected is our priority and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.”