There is a significant telecommunications outage occurring throughout Australia right now, which is affecting health services and causing significant delays for commuters.
According to preliminary reports, Optus mobile subscribers in Far North Queensland, Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth are all impacted by the outage.
Reports from mobile customers indicate that the signal indicator on their phones is flashing SOS.
Reports of downed NBN connections have also surfaced.
Due to the disruption, Melbourne’s whole train network was closed; however, service has since returned, albeit with significant delays anticipated.
The disruption has also affected a number of hospitals in Melbourne; according to Northern Health, the phone lines at several of its campuses were down.
According to the Australian Department of Home Affairs, there is no proof that a cyber-security breach is to blame for the blackout.
Optus stated it was “working to identify the cause” in a statement.
“Optus is aware of an issue that may be impacting some of our mobile and internet customers.”
According to the Optus website, engineers are looking into a network issue.
According to Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, the Australian Government was asking the telco for details regarding the event.
Nearly half of Australia’s population was left without phone or internet access on Wednesday due to an outage at Optus, the country’s second-largest telco. This caused mayhem in the payment, transportation, and health systems and raised concerns about the resilience of the nation’s essential infrastructure.
About 4 a.m. local time (1700 GMT on Tuesday) was when the disruption was initially reported, and it wasn’t until nearly 5.30 p.m. that Optus announced that services had been restored.
