Technical glitch causes telecom blackout in Aus, 10 million

According to reports, over 10 million Australians found themselves disconnected from internet and phone services due to unexplained outages affecting one of the nation's major telecommunications providers on Wednesday. This mysterious malfunction led to disruptions in electronic payment systems, affected emergency phone lines for ambulance and police services, and even caused brief delays for rush-hour trains in Melbourne, a major southern city.

Optus, a subsidiary of Singapore telecommunications company Singtel, said it had restored services on Wednesday evening but could not pinpoint what had caused the fault. Optus customers experienced a service disruption early Wednesday morning due to a technical network outage. Chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin expressed her apologies

"We are very sorry that this occurred and I am happy to say that services are now restored," she explained "Until we have done a full, thorough root cause analysis we really can't provide more information," she said, describing the outage as a "infrequent occurrence".

According to Australian media reports, the Optus boss said that there was "no indication" the issues were the result of hacking. It’s been just over a year since Optus’ data was stolen from more than 9 million of its customers in a cyber-attack. Many organisations 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 telecommunications company with over 10 million customers had struggled through the day to bring its systems back up.As reported, hospitals couldn't take phone calls, and emergency services couldn't be reached via Optus landlines. The poisons hotline in New South Wales was also affected. In Melbourne, during the morning rush hour, a "communications outage" caused train service disruptions. Australian Communications Minister Michelle Rowland attributed the Optus outage to a critical network component's "deep fault."

_{Photo: BBC}