10M Aussies lose web, phone services in mystery outage
Singtel restores some services but has yet to pinpoint cause of disruption
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Singtel restores some services but has yet to pinpoint cause of disruption
More than 10 million Australians were cut off from Internet and phone services on Wednesday after unexplained outages struck one of the country's largest communications companies.
The mystery glitch crashed electronic payment systems, disrupted phone lines used by ambulances and police, and briefly halted rush-hour trains in the country's largest city, Melbourne.
Optus, a subsidiary of Singapore telecommunications company Singtel, said some services had been restored on Wednesday afternoon — but it was unable to pinpoint what had caused the fault.
"Our team is still pursuing every possible avenue. We had a number of hypotheses and each one so far that we've tested and put in place new actions for has not resolved the fundamental issue," company chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told national broadcaster ABC.
"When we have identified a root cause and a time for restoration, we'll be updating everybody as soon as we can."
She said there was "no indication" the outage was the result of hacking. Just over a year ago, more than nine million Optus customers had their personal data stolen in a cyberattack.
The company said in a separate statement that it "may take a few hours for all services to come back on line."
A host of organizations and business confirmed Wednesday evening that issues had been resolved, including the federal department of education, the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and Australia's Commonwealth Bank.
Optus, Australia's second-largest telecoms firm with more than 10 million customers, identified the outage at around 4:05 a.m. local time.
For the next nine hours, widespread issues plagued Optus networks as engineers scrambled to find a fix.
'Absolute disgrace'
Dozens of hospitals were unable to receive phone calls, and landline phones on the Optus network could not ring emergency services.
The poisons hotline in the state of New South Wales also said it was impacted.
And there was rush-hour chaos in Melbourne after a "communications outage" disrupted train services.
Australian Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Optus outage had been caused by a "deep fault" in a "fundamental" part of the company's network.
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