Third round of mobile troubles strikes Telstra

Trouble comes in threes for telco

Update: An issue affecting Telstra's mobile customers is now resolved, a spokesperson for the telco has said. (Telstra later tweeted that it was "investigating some residual issues for a small number of customers.")

Earlier Telstra said it was investigating customer reports of problems with the telco’s mobile network.

"We are experiencing intermittent voice call failures and connection delays on our fixed and mobile networks – predominantly in Victoria and Tasmania, but impacting other states sporadically," a Telstra spokesperson said.

The issue is part of a horror run this year for the telco, which operates Australia’s largest and most advanced mobile network.

Less than a week ago, Telstra said it would give its mobile customers a ‘free data’ day in the wake of widespread network problems.

“We had a problem that triggered a significant number of customers to be disconnected from the network. Reconnecting them to the network caused congestion,” a Telstra spokesperson said at the time.

“We had a connection problem overseas impacting international roaming customers which then had a flow-on effect domestically.”

The spokesperson said that last week’s issue was not related to a major mobile outage in February.

“Following the last event we commenced a major process and engineering review of the network, which includes global network experts, to understand how it occurred, and while the two incidents are not related, we will add the lessons learned from this incident to that review,” the spokesperson said.

The February outage was chalked up by the telco to human error and in its wake the telco offered its first free data day.

“The outage impacted voice and data services for approximately 15 per cent of our mobile customers for around two hours with some flow on effects for others,” Telstra CEO Andrew Penn said during a half year results announcement on 18 February.

“Firstly, let me say we place the highest priority on the quality of our networks and we invest heavily to give our customers the best and most reliable mobile network in the country and that is why we were incredibly disappointed that this outage occurred and we sincerely apologise for the inconvenience that it will have caused,” the CEO said.

“Ultimately, the cause of the event was more in the nature of a human error rather than technical performance of the network; however that does not make it any less significant.”

“Customer advocacy is our number one priority as a company,” Penn said.

“It is my number one priority and that means our customers are at the heart of everything that we do. I personally spend time every day reviewing customer feedback and whilst I am encouraged that the number of complaints that we receive is reducing and I do believe we are making progress, I also know that we have more to do.

“On behalf of Telstra, therefore, I want to apologise again and thank everyone for their patience while the services were restored and whilst I realise it does not alter the inconvenience caused, the network was thoroughly tested on Sunday [during the telco’s first free data day] and acquitted itself very well.”

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