Telecoms outage cuts off millions of Australians
More than 10 million Australians were cut off from internet and phone services on Wednesday after unexplained outages struck one of the country's largest communications companies. The mystery glitch crashed electronic payment systems, disrupted phone lines used by ambulances and police, and briefly halted rush-hour trains in the country's largest city, Melbourne. Optus, a subsidiary of Singapore telecommunications company Singtel, said "some" services had been restored on Wednesday afternoon – but it was unable to pinpoint what had caused the fault. "Our team is still pursuing every possible avenue. We had a number of hypotheses and each one so far that we've tested and put in place new actions for has not resolved the fundamental issue," company chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin told national broadcaster ABC. "When we have identified a root cause and a time for restoration, we'll be updating everybody as soon as we can." She said there was "no indication" the outage was the result of hacking. Just over a year ago, more than nine million Optus customers had their personal data stolen in a cyberattack. In a separate statement, the company said it "may take a few hours for all services to come back on line". The Australian government said mobile phones, landlines and broadband internet had been impacted. Optus, Australia's second-largest telecoms firm with more than 10 million customers, said it had identified the outage at around 4.05 am local time. For the next nine hours, widespread issues plagued Optus networks as engineers scrambled to find a fix. (AFP)