2023 Optus outage
nationwide network outage
On 8 November 2023, an unplanned network outage occurred, consisting of all Optus internet, cellular and fixed-line services in Australia at 04:05 AEDT. The outage caused disruption across government and corporate sectors including hospitals, banks, train services, EFTPOS payment systems, and calls to emergency services. Restoration was gradual with some services being restored around 13:00 AEDT. The outage directly affected more than 10 million people and 400,000 businesses across Australia.
The cause was likely due to several routers disconnecting as an automated protective measure against routing update overload. Optus stated that the outage was not due to a cyberattack.
Background
Optus is an Australian telecommunications company owned by Singtel. It is the second-largest wireless carrier in Australia, serving over 11 million customers in part with a mobile network that reached 98.5% of the population in 2023. Around 25% of Australians use Optus for their cellular service and 19% for broadband internet.
Summary
Outage
The outage began early morning on Wednesday, 8 November 2023, at around 04:05 AEDT following a planned software upgrade to a Singtel North American exchange. The customer network began disconnecting first at around 04:05, and some domain name services stopped working.
Restoration
Restoration was a large-scale effort across more than 100 devices at 14 sites nationwide and took several hours.
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