Victorians slam Telstra, other providers over NBN outage
UPDATE: A faulty switch and power outage has been blamed for widespread NBN outages that affected thousands of Victorians.
Social media has lit up with reports of NBN outages across the state, including in Tullamarine, Poowong, Orbost, Warragul and Wyndham Vale.
Complaints about Telstra service outages began to boom about 7pm, with almost 450 reports shortly after, according to the Aussie Outages website.
Melbourne CBD, with postcode 3000, has a “current interruption” with NBN and ADSL.
NBN Co’s Michael Moore said about 2100 customers near Scoresby, Berwick, Narre Warren had been affected by an outage.
An Optus spokeswoman said a power outage in Melbourne had affected its customers.
But a Telstra spokesman blamed a faulty switch at the Exhibition St Exchange for his telco’s outages.
He said the switch had been fixed and that services were being restored.
“Some Telstra NBN voice and data customers in Victoria have been unable to make calls or connect to the internet since approximately 7.25pm this evening,” the spokesman said.
“The majority of customers impacted are in metropolitan Melbourne as well as some regional areas including Ballarat and Warragul.
“We expect the remaining services to be fixed later tonight. We apologise to customers and thank them for their understanding and patience.”
Live footage of the @Telstra office through this outage pic.twitter.com/wNmtvHYrNp
— Cameron (@LiquidWIFI) October 29, 2016
Brunswick’s Frank Paola, who has been a Telstra customer for about 20 years, said he was considering swapping telcos.
He said he spent an hour on the phone to Telstra before he “just gave up”.
“The internet had been cutting in and out, in and out every thirty seconds and then completely cut out,” Mr Paola said.
“It is very frustrating. It is typical of telstra.
“As a Telstra customer you pay for a premium service but you just don’t get it.
“I have had enough.”
So @Optus says it's @NBN_Australia outage, @NBN_Australia says contact service provider. How about someone take responsibility. #nbnfailvic
— sj (@xglossd) October 29, 2016
Darron Burt, from Footscray, vented on Twitter that NBN in the western suburbs was “completely out”.
“Get your NBN working properly,” he posted.
“It’s sluggish, dropping out frequently. Postcode 3011. Get it sorted immediately.”
Melbourne’s Michael Meloni said: “this Victoria NBN outage is getting ridiculous.
“Ahh, Aussie internet in 2016,” he posted on Twitter.
Optus tweeted just before 8pm that NBN “services are slowly coming back to life”.
“Optus had a power outage that affected some of our NBN customers,” the Optus spokesman said.
“The power is back on. The power was restored at 7.30pm.”
The Herald Sun has contacted Telstra for comment.