Australia's telecoms outage cuts off millions

SYDNEY — More than 10 million Australians were cut off from internet and phone services on Wednesday after outages struck one of the country's largest communications companies.

The glitch crashed electronic payment systems, disrupted phone lines used by ambulances and police, and briefly halted rush-hour trains in the southern city of Melbourne.

Optus, a subsidiary of Singapore telecommunications company Singtel, said it had restored services — but it was unable to pinpoint what had caused the fault.

A "technical network outage" detected at about 4:05 am Sydney time had cut off customers, Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told national broadcaster ABC. "We are very sorry that this occurred and I am happy to say that services are now restored again," she said.

"Until we have done a full, thorough root cause analysis we really can't provide more information," she said, describing the outage as a "very rare occurrence".

The Optus boss said there was "no indication" the issues were the result of hacking.

Just over a year ago, more than 9 million Optus customers had their personal data stolen in a cyberattack, Agence France-Presse reported.

A host of organizations and businesses confirmed their connections had been restored, including the Federal Department of Education, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Australia's Commonwealth Bank.

Optus, Australia's second-largest telecoms firm with more than 10 million customers, had struggled through the day to bring its systems back up.

Dozens of hospitals were unable to receive phone calls during the outage and landline phones on the Optus network could not ring emergency services.

There was morning rush-hour chaos in Melbourne after what officials described as a "communications outage" disrupted train services.

Australian Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Optus outage had been caused by a "deep fault" in a fundamental part of the company's network.

"What we do know is that this is a deep fault. It has occurred deep within the network," she told reporters.

"It has wide ramifications across mobile, fixed, and broadband services for Optus customers. Customers are clearly frustrated about it, and Optus should respond to that accordingly."

Australia's Communication Workers Union said the outage was an "absolute disgrace", linking it to recent job losses at the company.

Agencies Via Xinhua