Optus hit by widespread network outage

Optus is suffering an outage of its mobile and internet services in cities across Australia, with widespread problems being reported.

Customers started complaining of the service issues across the country’s east coast just before 10:30am AEST on Friday.

Ookla’s Downdector service showed spikes in outage reports in Sydney and Brisbane, which are both under lockdown, as well as Melbourne and Canberra.

The telco’s website, including network status page, and app was also briefly down.

Optus confirmed the outage at just after 11am, and said it was working to restore the impacted services as soon as possible.

“Optus is aware of an outage that may be impacting Optus services. We are aiming to restore these services as a priority,” it said on Twitter.

“We thank customers for their patience and will provide an update as soon as possible.”

Optus told iTnews at just after 11:30am that “ some mobile and internet services may have been affected by an outage”, but that those services now started to recover.

“While services look to be restoring, Optus is working to identify the cause of the outage,” a spokesperson said.

More to come