Vodafone offers free data to head off outage outrage

Telco offers unlimited free mobile data in wake of network woes

Vodafone customers will be able to use mobile data services between midnight on Friday and 3am on Monday morning without worrying about excess usage charges.

The free unlimited data is the telco's way of apologising for yesterday's network outage.

Vodafone's network problem started in Western Australia at 11am, with services affected by a transmission network failure. At 1pm as the telco was remedying the WA fault, Vodafone's national network was plagued with problems affecting voice calling, text messages and data.

A statement issued by the telco last night said that all services were restored by 4.10pm, except for data services in WA, which were restored at 6.30pm.

"We know our customers had a less than perfect network experience today and we want them to know we’re sorry," the telco's CTO, Benoit Hansse, said in a statement.

"Over the past three years our network team has worked tirelessly to ensure our customers have fast and reliable mobile coverage. To apologise we want them to enjoy unlimited data access all weekend."

The CTO said Vodafone was investigating the cause of the network problems.

Australia's number two telco, Optus, was similarly plagued with network issues yesterday afternoon. The telco has not detailed what caused the problems or their scope.

A statement from the telco issued early yesterday evening said that "Optus is resolving an issue that affected the mobile services of some customers and the majority of customers are now back up and running."

"We're really sorry and know this has been frustrating for customers," an Optus spokesperson said. A tweet at 6.35pm from the telco said that some customers were still affected by the problem.

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