Aussie Telco apologizes for third mass outage in a month

Australian telecommunications giant Telstra apologized to customers on Friday for its second large-scale outage after an off-shore issue was transferred into the domestic market.

Customers subscribing to Australia's largest telecommunications were unable to make calls or access the data network from approximately 1800 local time (AEDT) on Thursday due to extreme network congestion when a large number of services were disconnected, then reconnected at the same time.

Telstra boss Andy Penn publicly apologized the for the outage on Friday that caused disruptions to 8 million customers -- half the 16 million user base -- for up to four hours, offering a "free unlimited data day," like it did to make up for the loss.

"One outage is not good, is not acceptable, but two is absolutely not acceptable,"Penn said.

The company said it was reviewing Thursday's outage amongst the engineering review of its network that was started following last-month's outage -- blamed on human error -- that caused disruptions across its entire network.

Thursday's outage was not related to the previous event as overseas connection problem's affecting Telstra's international roaming customers had a flow-on effect. It's believed the initial point of failure was in one of Telstra's submarine cables.

Commentators on Friday said the continuing outages will affect Telstra's reputation which has allowed it to charge higher prices than rivals Vodafone Hutchison Australia and Singtel subsidiary Optus, both of which purchase wholesale access on Telstra's network. In early March, 500,000 of Telstra's pre-paid subscribers suffered service problems.

Telstra has become one of Asia's largest connectivity providers after acquiring Pacnet -- the world's largest private submarine cable network -- in 2015, with aims to increase its Asian expansion despite pulling out of negotiations for a joint venture in the Philippines.

Mobile phone use has become the big hope of Asia, with new disruptive technologies and business models providing the foundation stones for large e-commerce and other digital businesses to grow through rapid technology change.

By 1110 local time (AEDT), Telstra's shares had fallen from its open to trade just two (2) Australian cents (1.53 U.S. cents), or 0.38 percent higher at 5.28 Australian dollars (4.03 U.S. dollars). Endit