Optus has responded to the nationwide outage currently affecting millions of Australian customers, including transport services and hospitals.
On its website early on Wednesday, Optus said its engineers were investigating a network fault impacting customers.
The provider said it is working to restore services.
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“We’re aware of an issue impacting Optus mobile and NBN services and are working to restore services as quickly as possible,” Optus tweeted.
“We understand connectivity is important and apologise for any inconvenience caused.
“We encourage any customers who need to contact emergency services to use a mobile line to call 000. Optus can confirm triple-0 calls will not work from an Optus landline … mobile calls to 000 will work if another carrier is available.”
Optus teams are “trying many different angles” to get service back up and running for customers, Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told ABC Sydney about 10.50am local time.
“There is no indication that it is anything to do with spyware at this stage,” she replied when asked about the possibility of Optus being hacked.
Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowlands said she had spoken to Optus about the “significant” network problem but could not comment on questions as to whether it stemmed from a cyberattack.
“I would be reluctant to speculate on that at this stage,” she told ABC Radio Sydney.
Several other providers on the Optus network such as Moose Mobile, Dodo, Coles Mobile, Aussie Broadband and Amaysim have also been reported to be impacted.
Melbourne train services were also interrupted early on Wednesday, rwith Metro Trains announcing about 4.40am the entire network had been shut down due to the outage.
“Services are currently stopped due to a communications outage across the train network,” it said.
Metro Train services started to resume just before 6am but major delays continued throughout the morning peak as services were restored.
– With AAP
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