UPDATE
Telstra’s chief operating officer, Kate McKenzie, has announced Telstra mobile customers will get free data on Sunday, February 14, because of an outage which affected many customers across Australia.
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“We’re giving all our mobile customers free data this Sunday,” Ms McKenzie said in a statement released on Tuesday night.
“Earlier today we experienced an outage on our mobile network that impacted voice and data services for some of our customers.
“I wanted to let you know what occurred, what we did to fix it and what we’re doing for our customers as a result.
Ms McKenzie said Telstra places the “highest priority” on the quality of their networks and were continually investing to ensure customers got “the best and most reliable mobile network in the country”.
She said she was incredibly disappointed the outage occurred and was deeply sorry for the inconvenience caused.
“Our mobile network is set up with a number of major connection points (what we call nodes) around the country, which our customers connect to,” she said.
“These nodes are the equipment that essentially manage the flow of voice and data traffic across our mobile network.
“The outage was triggered when one of these nodes experienced a technical fault and was taken offline to fix.
“This normally wouldn't impact services as we have processes in place to make sure any customers currently connected to a node are transferred to another node before it is taken offline.
“Unfortunately on this occasion the right procedures were not followed and this resulted in customers being disconnected and consequent heavy congestion on other nodes as customers attempted to reconnect to the network.
“While the outage was short in duration we fully realise the impact it had on our customers, which is why we are offering all of our customers a day of free mobile data this Sunday.
“Customers don’t need to do anything to receive the free data, it will happen automatically for all of our mobile customers.
“I apologise again on behalf of the company and thank everyone for their patience while we restored services.”
Earlier
Telstra customers in Griffith weren’t alone when they lost mobile voice and data service on Tuesday. A major problem disrupted services right across the country.
“The outage was caused when one of our major mobile nodes went down,” a Telstra spokesman said.
“The network is configured to manage this, however, in this instance we had issues transferring customers to other nodes which caused congestion on the network for some customers.
“Services have now been restored with the vast majority of our customers now back online. We thank customers for their patience and apologise for the inconvenience caused.”
...
Telstra customers in Griffith are not alone in having problems making calls and accessing the Internet.
According to a Telstra spokesman, the issue was nationwide.
“We are aware of an issue currently affecting mobile voice and data nationally,” the spokesman said.
“We are working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible and thank customers for their patience.”
Customers at the Telstra Shop in Griffith reportedly understood it was a national issue and hoped it would be fixed soon.