More than 10 million Australians were without internet and phone services on Wednesday after unexplained outages at one of the country’s largest telecommunications companies.
Telephone operator Optus said it was trying to locate and fix the faults that had crippled electronic payment systems and disrupted emergency services phone lines.
“There is no evidence” that the outage was the result of a hack or cyberattack, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, the company’s chief executive, told national broadcaster ABC.
“Our team continues to explore all possible avenues. We had a number of hypotheses and each of them that we tested and took new actions on did not solve the fundamental problem,” explained Ms. Bayer Rosmarin.
“Once we identify the root cause and a timeframe for recovery, we will notify everyone as quickly as possible,” she added.
The Australian government said mobile and landline phones and broadband internet were affected.
Optus, Australia’s second-largest phone and internet provider, said it detected the outage at around 4:05 a.m. local time. More than seven hours later, the network was still experiencing widespread problems.
Dozens of hospitals were unable to answer calls and emergency services could not be reached via landlines on the Optus network.
The New South Wales state poison hotline also said it was affected.
According to operating company Metro Trains Melbourne, rush hour services in the city of Melbourne were chaotic after a “communications failure” disrupted train services.
“Our teams are working to restore services as quickly as possible,” an Optus company spokesperson said in an earlier statement. “Optus sincerely apologizes to its customers.”
Australian Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Optus outage was caused by a “serious error” in a “fundamental” part of the company’s network.
The outages come just over a year after the personal information of more than nine million Optus customers was stolen in a cyberattack.