FRANKSTON, VIC. — Damage to an aerial cable has resulted in approximately 14,096 outages affecting mobile phone voice and data services in the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula areas.
This outage impacts calls to Emergency Services.
Optus says a major service outage that affected thousands of services south of Melbourne was caused by vandals attempting to steal copper wiring, a common occurrence due to the cost of copper.
Optus spokesperson Jane McNamara, speaking to ABC Radio Melbourne about 11am, said the telco believed no Triple Zero calls had been disrupted.
She said technicians had been at the site of the problem since early this morning.
“We do have photo evidence, very clear, that there has been a cut made,” she said.
“We know copper has been removed from the pit and we have contacted Victoria Police.”
Ms McNamara said the issue was expected to be rectified by about 1pm.
Optus customers will only be able to call Emergency Services if they are within coverage of another mobile network or are able to call via WiFi.
Optus is currently investigating the matter and is expected to provide a timeframe for service restoration shortly.
Some customers are reporting that their phones have reconnected. “I’ve got all bars, but I won’t be calling triple-zero to check,” Warwick, of Frankston, told Raf Epstein on ABC Radio Melbourne (3LO) mornings.
“I’ve got everything else so I’m assuming — at least at this end of what was the outage — we’re okay. I don’t know whether people further down on the peninsula have got it or not but it’s come back here,” Warwick said.
It is not known if this signal is from Optus or another provider, such as Telstra.
It comes following outages across the country in recent months, some of which cut off access to Triple Zero.
Optus is the subject of a Senate inquiry, following one such outage in September, which resulted in two deaths who could not get through to emergency services.
The telco drew additional scrutiny after it emerged it held 11 crisis meetings and waited almost a day before telling the government about the three deaths.
In November, Optus chief executive Stephen Rue told the senate inquiry that Optus had taken several steps to improve its processes since the major outage.
Those steps included daily Triple Zero test calls, protocols to check Triple Zero connectivity during upgrades, and plans to move its call centres for emergencies from Manila back onshore.
Optus has also commissioned an independent review into the technical failures, expected to be completed before the end of the year.
