A network failure at Australia’s second-largest telecom provider, Optus, resulted in millions of Australians losing mobile and internet services.
The disruption caused transport delays, disrupted hospital phone lines, and led to the shutdown of payment systems.
Over 10 million people and numerous businesses were affected, with services being restored after approximately 12 hours.
Optus attributed the issue to a “technical network fault” and stated that further investigation was needed to identify the root cause.
During the disruption, people across Australia were unable to reach emergency services and critical helplines, and train services in Victoria were temporarily crippled.
The outage also impacted other providers using the Optus network, including Amaysim, Aussie Broadband, and Moose Mobile.
While Optus’ CEO, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, apologized for the incident, she dismissed claims that 600 job cuts were related to the outage.
Notably, the company experienced a significant data breach due to a cyber attack the previous year.
