Millions of customers in Australia hit by mobile phone and internet outage

From an interview with ABC (Australian public broadcaster&#x2F;news network) with the Optus CEO ---<p>ABC: Can you tell us why the system&#x27;s gone down?<p>Optus CEO: Unfortunately, I don&#x27;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&#x27;re pursuing every avenue to get everybody back online as soon as possible.<p>ABC: Do they know what happened though? Who&#x27;s there the team that you&#x27;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&#x27;ve tested and put in place new actions for has not resolved the fundamental issue. So we&#x27;re still working on it. And when we have a identified root cause and a time for restoration, we&#x27;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&#x27;t believe it&#x27;s a &#x27;cyber attack&#x27; (Optus had an enormous data breach last year with 9.7 million customers data leaked: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2022_Optus_data_breach" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;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:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smh.com.au&#x2F;technology&#x2F;what-caused-the-optus-outage-20231108-p5eiep.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smh.com.au&#x2F;technology&#x2F;what-caused-the-optus-outa...</a>

&quot;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.&quot;<p>Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stuff.co.nz&#x2F;world&#x2F;australia&#x2F;301004965&#x2F;major-optus-outage-millions-unable-to-make-calls-including-000-or-use-internet-in-australia" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.stuff.co.nz&#x2F;world&#x2F;australia&#x2F;301004965&#x2F;major-optu...</a>

I dropped optus like a hot coal after they leaked all my data and then lied to me that they hadn&#x27;t. I&#x27;m surprised anyone is still with them.

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 &#x2F; upgrade gone wrong? My company used to do such critical upgrades &#x2F; 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:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38181986">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38181986</a>

&gt; All of Melbourne&#x27;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:&#x2F;&#x2F;launtel.net.au" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;launtel.net.au</a><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.productreview.com.au&#x2F;listings&#x2F;launtel" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.productreview.com.au&#x2F;listings&#x2F;launtel</a><p>Note - I don&#x27;t work for them or anything, am just a happy customer. :)

Roughly a third of the entire country is currently without mobile service. The communication from Optus has been rather lacklustre.

The same provider leaked all customer data in very recent history