From an interview with ABC (Australian public broadcaster/news network) with the Optus CEO
---<p>ABC: Can you tell us why the system's gone down?<p>Optus CEO: Unfortunately, I don't have more information to give at this stage. We have had issues since 4am. The team has tried a number of parts of restoration and so far we have not had the results that we have hoped for. And we're pursuing every avenue to get everybody back online as soon as possible.<p>ABC: Do they know what happened though? Who's there the team that you've got working on it?<p>Optus CEO: 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. So we're still working on it. And when we have a identified root cause and a time for restoration, we'll be updating everybody as soon as we can.<p>---<p>Pretty wild to be down for over 7 hours no with no sign of a fix yet. Note they have also said they don't believe it's a 'cyber attack' (Optus had an enormous data breach last year with 9.7 million customers data leaked: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Optus_data_breach" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Optus_data_breach</a> )
“An Optus source, who did not wish to be named because they were not authorised to speak publicly, said a BGP prefix flood from a peer was likely causing the issues on the telco’s core network.”<p>“Our on-site technician is actively prioritising establishing a console connection [a physical cable connection],” the message to Optus’ partners early on Wednesday said. “Rest assured that said technician is also being provided additional technical support remotely.”<p>[1] <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/technology/what-caused-the-optus-outage-20231108-p5eiep.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.smh.com.au/technology/what-caused-the-optus-outa...</a>
"One Optus customer, Annie, told ABC Radio she found out about the issues through her cat, who is fed through an automatic Wi-Fi feeder, and missed being fed due to the outage."<p>Source: <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/301004965/major-optus-outage-millions-unable-to-make-calls-including-000-or-use-internet-in-australia" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/301004965/major-optu...</a>
Apparently about 10 million customers. or roughly 40% of population. More concerningly, the cause has not been identified yet, after 7 hours. Was identified as down at 3am? ( Maybe some maintenance / upgrade gone wrong? My company used to do such critical upgrades / changes at 2am on Tuesdays ... )
just went to the store to buy a Vodafone prepaid sim card. There were about 60 people in line.
Point of sales are out in a lot of coffee shops. Utter chaos!
More comments here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181986">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38181986</a>
> All of Melbourne's train services stopped temporarily due to a communications outage, and Metro Trains said it was unable to rely on its back-up system, which used the Optus mobile network.<p>Their primary and their backup were both Optus. Not much of a backup.
If anyone in Aust is looking for a better internet service than Optus, then Launtel is very, very good:<p>* <a href="https://launtel.net.au" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://launtel.net.au</a><p>* <a href="https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/launtel" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.productreview.com.au/listings/launtel</a><p>Note - I don't work for them or anything, am just a happy customer. :)