Optus Australia Suffers 3G Network Failure

A system failure shut down Optus Australia's 3G network along the east coast, including Melbourne for some eight hours on Friday.  The GSM network in the area was unaffected by the outage, and while 3G phones should normally drop down automatically to the GSM network for voice calls, it was reported that customers were having to manually switch to the GSM service. Access to 3G data services were completely disabled.

Optus technical support staff said that the outage affected the entire eastern seaboard and started around 10am local time. There were unconfirmed reports that the outage also affected Sydney and Brisbane.

This is the second serious outage for the network in recent weeks after a cable break shut down services in Queensland and a switching centre failed to divert traffic to a back-up cable.

Optus recently announced an investment program to expand its nationwide mobile network beyond 96 per cent population coverage to reach 98 per cent. The program will cost AU$315 million (US$298 million) and is targeted for completion by December 2009. This significant expansion of the Optus network will be achieved using 900MHz spectrum, utilising HSPA wireless broadband technology.

"OptusÃ' 3G mobile network is currently being upgraded to deliver broadband speeds of up to 7.2 Megabits per second (Mbps). We have plans in place to increase to speeds of up to 28 Mbps from late 2009. In addition, Optus will also work with its strategic partners to make the network capable of up to 42 Mbps by mid 2010," Mr Paul OÃ'Sullivan, Optus Chief Executive said.

Figures from the Mobile World database note that Optus ended Q1 '08 with a shade over 1.4 million 3G subscribers, out of a total base of nearly 7.2 million customers.

Posted to the site on 2nd August 2008