Telstra’s mobile customers will be given a day of quota-free mobile data after a massive outage took down 3G and 4G mobile services earlier today.
“Our mobile network is set up with a number of major connection points (what we call nodes) around the country, which our customers connect to,” Telstra’s COO, Kate McKenzie, wrote in a message to customers.
“These nodes are the equipment that essentially manage the flow of voice and data traffic across our mobile network. The outage was triggered when one of these nodes experienced a technical fault and was taken offline to fix. This normally wouldn't impact services as we have processes in place to make sure any customers currently connected to a node are transferred to another node before it is taken offline.”
“Unfortunately on this occasion the right procedures were not followed and this resulted in customers being disconnected and consequent heavy congestion on other nodes as customers attempted to reconnect to the network,” the COO wrote.
After the fault was identified Telstra prioritised bringing voice services back online, followed by data services.
“While the outage was short in duration we fully realise the impact it had on our customers, which is why we are offering all of our customers a day of free mobile data this Sunday,” the COO wrote.
Customers will automatically get access to the free data.
“I apologise again on behalf of the company and thank everyone for their patience while we restored services,” McKenzie wrote.