Telstra customers across Australia fuming after yet another outage cuts them off

Telstra customers have been inconvenienced once again after an exchange fire in Sydney affected customers across the country and forcing them to express their outrage on social media.

At 1.40pm, Telstra tweeted that “a fire at one of our exchanges is impacting some mobile and fixed services. We’re working to resolve ASAP.”

Customers were soon complaining that they couldn’t make or receive calls and text messages.

But the effects of the outage were far more wide ranging with businesses and even Jetstar flights being delayed because the airline could not check customers in through their computers.

Telstra later revealed in a statement that the fire was at its Chatswood exchange that damaged some power infrastructure with a number of customers experiencing a loss of service.

Unfortunately, the issue wasn’t limited to Sydney and soon Telstra customers across the country, including Perth, Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne and parts of South, were also affected.

A fire at one of our exchanges is impacting some mobile and fixed services. We’re working to resolve ASAP. Thanks for your patience.

— Telstra (@Telstra) February 2, 2017

Later Telstra informed customers that SMS services were “incorrectly delivered” which meant some messages were sent to the wrong numbers.

We’re currently investigating a related issue impacting SMS messaging. Messages will be held while we resolve the issue.

— Telstra (@Telstra) February 2, 2017

Some users on other networks were reporting on Twitter they were receiving text messages from Telstra.

By 3.20pm, Telstra reported that services were starting to be restored.

Today’s outage comes less than a year after several outages had fuming customers completely cut off from the network.

#telstraoutage means people getting random texts. Sorry if you got my really funny gifs or questions about what’s for dinner tonight. pic.twitter.com/kmEh6YJGX4

— Anthony Clark (@AnthonyClarkAU) February 2, 2017

As the self-proclaimed best network in Australia, Telstra has a lot of explaining to do after this latest outage.

@Telstra …not again! Give me back my #internet ….. #telstraoutage #telstra over it!

— Michelle M-Goldsmith (@MMG9898) August 31, 2016

And the biggest question to be asked is how a fire in the Sydney suburb of Chatswood can effect customers nationwide.

Were you affected by today’s Telstra outage?