2023-11-08 07:49:01
More than 10 million Australians were left without internet and phone services on Wednesday (November 8) after unexplained outages hit one of the country’s largest telecommunications companies, the operator said.
Telephone operator Optus said it was scrambling to locate and repair the faults, which have knocked out electronic payment systems and disrupted emergency services phone lines. “Nothing indicates” whether the outage is the result of a hack or a cyberattack, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, general manager of the company, told national channel ABC.
“Our team continues to explore all possible avenues. We had a number of hypotheses and none of them, which we tested and for which we implemented new actions, were able to resolve the fundamental problem.explained Ms. Bayer Rosmarin.
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The government said mobile and landline telephones as well as broadband Internet were affected. Optus, the country’s second largest telephone and internet service provider, said it identified the outage at around 4:05 a.m. Sydney time. More than seven hours later, widespread problems were still affecting the network.
Rail traffic disrupted in Melbourne
Dozens of hospitals were unable to receive phone calls, and landlines on the Optus network were unable to reach emergency services. The New South Wales state poison helpline also said it was affected.
Rush hour was chaotic in the city of Melbourne after a “communication breakdown” disrupted train services, according to the management company Metro Trains Melbourne. “Our teams are working to restore services as soon as possiblesaid an Optus company spokesperson in an earlier statement. Optus sincerely apologizes to its customers. »
Australian Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Optus outage was caused by a “deep failure” in a part ” fundamental “ of the company network. The breakdown “has a wide-ranging impact on Optus customers’ mobile, landline and broadband services”she stressed before calling on society to “react accordingly”.
The Australian Communications Workers Union has denounced a “absolute shame”suggesting the outage was linked to recent job cuts at the company.
Mark Gregory, a researcher at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, said Wednesday’s disruptions showed there were fundamental problems in Australia’s communications networks. “Outages linked to a single point of failure have occurred too often in recent decades and it is time for the government to step in to force the telecommunications industry to build in redundancy [présence de doublons pour maintenir la connectivité en cas de panne] in networks and systems ».
The outages come just over a year after the personal data of more than nine million Optus customers was stolen in a cyberattack.
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