It’s not great news for Optus customers today, or even customers on Optus-based virtual operators, with no way of accessing anything.
Spare a thought for customers of Optus today, or even customers of mobile operators that use Optus for their network, because they’re probably not having a nice time. There are no downloads, uploads, or connections of any kind, as Optus faces a massive outage affecting the entirety of its network.
The issue has been happening since 4AM Sydney time (November 8) affecting all communication services from Optus, and comes a little over a year past when the telco saw a major data breach.
In short, it’s not a great look, and over eight hours past the initial start time of the outage, Optus still hasn’t seen services returned.
While the company hasn’t said what the problem is, the outage means that the Optus service status page has been reporting a network fault for hours, with a possibility of traffic routing instructions being the culprit.
The result, however, means:
- Optus mobile services are down
- Optus fixed internet services are down, and
- Optus landlines can’t make 000 calls
If you use one of the many low-cost carriers that use Optus, such as Amaysim, Circles.Life, and Dodo, your services will also be affected.
So what can you do?
What can you do if you Optus and the network is down?
Sit tight. Wait. That’s about the gist of it. Check your phone to see if the internet is working and if you have internet access elsewhere, other news sources, too, because until Optus fixes this, the millions of people affected by this drama make this a big news story.
If you need to call in an emergency, the triple-zero SOS feature on mobile phones should still work, even if 000 doesn’t work from Optus landlines suffering from the outage.
Online activity is another situation altogether. If you need to get online using your phone, check to see if any nearby friends or family have a connection that doesn’t rely on Optus, or even consider heading to a coffee shop or restaurant, having a feed, and using their internet access. Provided they don’t use Optus, too, you might be able to log on and do your thing.
Otherwise, you’ll just need to wait, like every other Optus customer and subscriber.
UPDATE (3.30PM): It looks as though the waiting won’t be for much longer. Optus services are coming back to life, though it may take the rest of the day for everything to return to normal
