3 months ago
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More than 90,000 Optus customers in Brisbane and parts of Queensland continue to be affected by a network server failure, some unable to make Triple Zero calls, after the service provider promised to restore connection by 4pm on Wednesday.
Optus customers across the region reported issues with their NBN internet connections as early as 4am on Wednesday, which the telco put down to a “network server failure” at its Brisbane exchange in Rochedale.
Optus customers say they are still impacted by outages in Brisbane despite the telco assuring them the network was restored on Wednesday. Credit: Renee Nowytarger
Customers who have their landline connected through the NBN were unable to make Triple Zero calls from their home phone.
Optus apologised for the disruption and said technicians were working “as quickly as possible to fully restore connectivity for all Optus NBN customers”, with a spokesperson telling this masthead services would be restored as of 4pm Wednesday.
Later that evening, Optus said NBN services in Brisbane and affected parts of Queensland had been fully restored.
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But some customers are still without connection on Thursday morning, and have reported difficulties contacting the telco for support.
One customer told this masthead that they received no information about the outage from the NBN or Optus, and spent more than half an hour on hold to the provider.
“After 24 hours, my messages are still not answered. Absolutely nuts after all the controversies surrounding the telco. Time to switch,” they said.
Another customer who works from home said they had to finish work at 2pm due to the full outage, after four “intermittent” outages in the hours before.
“Cost me $300 of lost revenue. Also their backup internet via 4G didn’t work either, only 5G was working. Have now moved my NBN and mobile to Telstra.”
Optus said “voice over internet phone calls, via a customer’s NBN broadband connection, may have been affected if the customer has an older modem without 4G or 5G back-up,” and told affected customers to turn their modem off, unplug it from the wall, and then turn it back on if their NBN did not automatically reconnect.
One customer, who lives in Fortitude Valley, said they had tried that “more times than I care to think about” and expressed frustration at Optus’s customer service team.
The network failure is the latest to devastate the telco after an outage on September 18 prevented 605 customers from reaching Triple Zero for more than 14 hours in South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. It was later linked to three deaths.
Eleven days later, almost 5000 Optus customers in the Illawarra region of NSW could not contact emergency services for more than nine hours.
Last week, more than 14,000 Optus customers in Melbourne’s south-east were unable to make calls or use mobile data, with calls to emergency services also impacted.
A spokeswoman for Health Minister Tim Nicholls said the Queensland government was closely monitoring the situation and was working with the Queensland Ambulance Service.
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