Telstra mobile network hit by significant outage

Telstra’s mobile network is experiencing a large-scale outage impacting voice and data services on Wednesday, with users finding their phones in SOS mode.

Click here for the telco's latest explanation of the nationwide issues.

The telco acknowledged an unspecified issue with its network on its social channels, although it said only “some” mobile calls and data connections were affected.

A spokesperson said at 9.45am that restoration is progressing - almost six hours after the problems began - "with around 90 percent of calls and data now flowing successfully across the network."

"Our teams are working as quickly as possible to restore remaining services and get all customers back online," the spokesperson said.

iTnews has asked for information on the root cause.

iTnews' journalists saw some services briefly recover around 8.30am, but they were intermittent and did not last.

There are still significant flow-on issues across the country.

Users reported widespread problems across all states and territories including NSW, Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and Western Australia on the telco’s official Facebook page.

V/Line train services suspended

The impact of the outage is being felt by commuters throughout regional Victoria, with all V/Line services halted due to the outage.

V/Line relies on Telstra's 4G network for critical communications between train drivers and the control centre.

"Due to a national Telstra outage affecting the network, services are currently unable to operate," V/Line said in an official notification on its Facebook page.

"There is no estimated time for rectification at this stage."

Eftpos terminals also impacted

Tyro Payments, which supplies eftpos terminals to businesses, said in a service status message that it is "aware of an issue with a national telephone network provider and that some customers may not be able to connect to the 4G network right now to process eftpos transactions."

"As an interim solution, until service is restored, please try connecting to your ethernet or wi-fi network," the company advised impacted merchants.

"While this issue is outside Tyro's control, we’re actively monitoring the situation and will provide updates as they become available."

Impacts Telstra and its MVNO customers

Downdetector, a source of user-generated incident reports, showed a large spike in reports of problems with the Telstra network starting around 5am.

However, users in East Coast cities reported that their services went out even earlier at around 4am.

The problems are not just impacting Telstra customers, but also customers of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that use parts of the Telstra mobile network.

Impacted MVNOs include Everyday Mobile and Aldi Mobile.

While the telco's official outages page did display a notification initially, it disappeared, and searching for information produced an error message: "Something went wrong. We didn't get a response from some services so there may be outages not listed here."

Potential test of new outage disclosure rules

The outage is shaping as a potential test of new outage disclosure rules that came into effect this month.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said only last week that telcos are now required "to provide public registers of resolved major outages and significant local outages across their networks."

"These registers must include information including when the outage started, when services were restored, the geographic areas affected, the types and estimated number of services impacted, and the high-level cause of the outage," ACMA said.

ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said at the time that "the outage data would benefit consumers, regulators and emergency services stakeholders."

“Network outages can be incredibly disruptive, particularly when they affect access to vital communications services,” O’Loughlin said.

“Publishing outage information in a consistent way will improve transparency for consumers and provide valuable public data about the reliability of the telco networks.”