Yahoo Finance Vodafone, Optus suffer outages; customers unable to make phone calls
Update: OPTUS and Vodafone have advised customers experiencing difficulties with their network to turn their phone off and on again to rectify the issue.
UPDATE Those customers affected, please turn your phone off & then on. This should fix the problem. We apologise again for the inconvenience
— Optus (@Optus) June 19, 2014
Optus and Vodafone customers across the country were unable to make or take phone calls, send text messages, and use data due to widespread outages at both networks today.
The outage, that hit Voda customers on Thursday morning, also affected those on telcos that use Optus' network, such as Amaysim and Virgin Mobile.
Both telcos have now asked their customers to switch off their mobile phones and switch it back on again for a fix.
A spokeswoman for Vodafone said a failed transmission link was responsible for the outage which started at around 9 am.
“We apologise to our customers for the inconvenience caused. We know how important it is for our customers to stay connected and rest assured we are working as hard as we can to restore services,” she said.
Try to ring housemate, he's on Vodafone. They're having a national outage. Cool http://t.co/SgOy2RuNM7
— Ben Grubb (@bengrubb) June 19, 2014
It is unknown exactly how many people were affected but there were reports of disruption in all states.
Issues started with Optus around 3 pm. The company posted on their Twitter account: "We are aware of an issue affecting some Optus customers at the moment. We're currently investigating the problem and will keep you updated."
A spokeswoman for Optus said it was unclear what had caused the outage.Users took to social media to blast the outage, which many first discovered when shown an “SOS only” message on their mobile phones.
Others Tweeted their disappointment about not being able to make business calls during the outage.
Vodafone Australia.... Keeping customers happy since two thousand and never. Afternoon of being an email recruiter....!! #networkdown
— BellineInternational (@BellineInternat) June 19, 2014
