A fire at Telstra's Chatswood exchange has plunged users into the dark ages, with widespread outages on Thursday affecting calls and text messages as well as delaying flights.
Telstra confirmed services were being affected around midday on Thursday, saying: "A fire at the Chatswood Exchange in Sydney this afternoon has been contained, but damage has been caused to some power infrastructure.
"As a result a number customers are experiencing loss of service."
A fire at one of our exchanges is impacting some mobile and fixed services. We're working to resolve ASAP. Thanks for your patience.
— Telstra (@Telstra) February 2, 2017
Telstra also said any text messages affected by the outage were being held, and some may have been sent "incorrectly".
"As a result of the Chatswood Exchange fire today its possible some SMS messages have been incorrectly delivered," a statement sent to HuffPost Australia said.
"Customers won't be receiving SMS messages in the short term while we resolve this issue."
We're currently investigating a related issue impacting SMS messaging. Messages will be held while we resolve the issue.
— Telstra (@Telstra) February 2, 2017
In terms of the breadth of the outages, a Telstra spokesperson could not confirm how many people were affected other than saying "we've had reports customers affected in different parts of the country".
Jetstar Airways flights were also affected by the outage, as Telstra systems are used in check-in processes.
Some flights disrupted due to @Telstra outage. 9 AU flights delayed ~45mins; check-in for some flights paused; some ports manual check-in.
— Jetstar Airways (@JetstarAirways) February 2, 2017
A Jetstar statement said flights in Melbourne and Sydney were delayed but services were coming back online about 3.30pm.