The national Optus outage and the telecommunications company’s handling of the crisis has been branded a massive failure.

Telecommunications Ombudsman Cynthia Gerbert says telcos “generally” keep her informed of outages, but she’s received no correspondence from Optus this morning.

Press PLAY below to hear her thoughts on how Optus is dealing with the major outage

The nationwide Optus phone and internet outage has also led to Eftpos problems, brought down hospital networks and shut down Melbourne’s train network for hours this morning. Significant train delays persist.

“It’s a really frustrating scenario,” she told Neil Mitchell. “”My normal response would be call Optus and let them know ands then call the TIO, but when you don’t have a phone you can’t do either one of those things.”

We’re aware of an issue impacting Optus mobile and nbn services and are working to restore services as quickly as possible. We understand connectivity is important and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

— Optus Help (@optus_help) November 7, 2023

Image: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images