Some Telstra small business customers continue to be affected by outages after major service disruptions across the country on Thursday.
Telstra services experienced major disruptions after a fire at the Chatswood exchange in Sydney impacted 3G and 4G services nationally along with some enterprise customers. Telstra customers lost connectivity and were unable to establish a call connection.
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Fire causes Telstra outage
A Chatswood Exchange fire causes headaches for Telstra customers across Australia.
Another related glitch caused personal SMS messages of Telstra customers to be sent to phone users of other networks across Australia.
Margherita Boemo, manages Sprint Gas, and says the gas conversion business is still having outage problems at its office and factory in Campbellfield and office in Brisbane.
![Margherita Boemo of Sprint Gas in Campbellfield. Her business has been affected by Telstra outage.](/web/20170204192731im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/5/6/a/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gu4n0x.png/1486104502215.jpg)
Boemo says Sprint Gas' primary business is supplying gas conversion equipment to automotive mechanics so the business needs to contact its customers frequently.
"We also do some conversions and servicing in-house so it's been very difficult returning customer's inquiries where they ask for a call back or to confirm their bookings in lieu of SMS," Boemo says.
"When we actually do get onto customers on a line that is working, some are saying that it sounds like we haven't paid our bills. Not the reputation I want to have in the market."
Sprint Gas hasn't quantified the financial cost yet but Boemo says the impact to resources so far is at least 5 hours disruption for the seven full-time staff who rely on being able to contact customers.
![Telstra services experienced major disruptions after a fire at the Chatswood exchange in Sydney impacted 3G and 4G ...](/web/20170204192731im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/3/y/c/m/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gu4n0x.png/1486104502215.jpg)
@Telstra just wondering what you'll be doing for the businesses that were affected by your outage yesterday?
— Danielle McDonald (@beautybusiness_) February 2, 2017
Advanced Skin Spa on the New South Wales Central Coast was also hit by the outage.
The beauty salon and gym employs 12 staff and owner Danielle McDonald says staff were unable to make any outgoing calls and customers weren't able to call Advanced Skin Spa for almost four hours on Thursday.
Internet service was unaffected but text messages also didn't work.
When we actually do get onto customers on a line that is working, some are saying that it sounds like we haven't paid our bills. Not the reputation I want to have in the market.
Margherita Boemo
"Customers were messaging on Facebook and emailing and saying they couldn't get through," McDonald says.
She tried to call Telstra a few times but was waiting in a queue for 40 minutes and so gave up.
"Thursdays is one of our busiest days in terms of bookings for the weekend and the next week," she says.
"Three or four hours outage could amount to thousands of dollars for us. If we are missing calls that is money."
Telstra service resumed after about three hours for Advanced Skin Spa but McDonald says she wants to know what Telstra is going to do.
"It would be nice if they could apologise," she says.
McDonald says she is "locked in" to a contract for some services and so it is difficult to leave Telstra despite the problems she has had.
"We are in a difficult position as I feel all telecommunication companies are the same and have issues," she says.
Steve Carey, spokesperson for Telstra, says Telstra restored mobile services from 2.50pm on Thursday and enterprise services from 3.40pm.
"The fire was quickly contained and no one was hurt. We are now investigating the cause of the fire," he says.
"We apologise to customers whose services were impacted by the fire. We assure them we worked as quickly as possible to restore services."
If businesses are still experiencing outages Carey says they should get in touch with their account executive or contact Telstra directly.
Following previous outages Telstra has offered "free data days" for customers as compensation but Carey says any request for compensation will be addressed "on a case by case basis".
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