Customers of Aussie telecom make full advantage of "free data day" offer

Customers of Australian telecommunications company Telstra took full advantage of a "free data day" on Sunday, downloading an unprecedented 2,686 terabytes of data as part of an apology for a widespread and crippling network outage last month.

Telstra, the nation's largest telecom provider, was plagued with a third network outage in as many months on March 17, and informed customers they would be given a free data day to download anything they fancy on the mobile data network.

Following Sunday's frenzy, a spokesperson from Telstra said its customers were more than happy to take advantage of the offer. They downloaded the equivalent of 3.4 million high definition movies throughout the 24-hour period.

However, despite the make-up day, some users found the network once again to struggl due to the high usage.

On Monday, the spokesperson said the 2,686 terabyte figure was a record for Telstra, and was 46 percent more than what was downloaded on the network's last free data day, which was on February 14.

"We are also glad to see the underlying strength of the network demonstrated, despite a few hot spots where heavy users caused localized congestion," the spokesperson said in a statement on Monday.

"Overall, the majority of customers continued to experience a reliable level of service and we look forward to continuing to provide this well into the future."

The spokesperson said customers downloaded everything from movies and television shows, to applications and software updates. Some even used the free data to install software and participate in online gaming.

Telstra's network outage occurred on March 17, when around half of its 16 million mobile customers were unable to make phone calls or browse the web online. It followed a similar outage on Feb. 9, which prompted the first free data day.

A third outage affected half a million Telstra pre-paid customers, who lost service at the start of March. Endit