Network suspensions continue following telco outage

Update: Colac and district train travellers are encouraged to defer travel across the V-Line network on Thursday with a Telstra outage continuing to impact services.

V-line confirmed this evening that tonight’s services and tomorrow morning’s peak services will not be running.

“A very limited coach service is running and at this point, the advice remains for passengers to defer travel on V-Line services until further notice. In line with the position of other affected operators nationally V-Line is continuing to halt services.“

V-Line said there were significant delays at Southern Cross station.

“We ask passengers avoid travel until further notice and continue to check the V-Line website for the latest information

“We thank passengers for their patience and understanding. We are working to restore services as soon as possible tomorrow.”

Transport Victoria’s signals team is monitoring conditions in the area and will adjust traffic lights to assist with bus movements, the transport company said.

“Motorists are asked to be vigilant for extra pedestrians and buses around V-Line train stations.”

Commuters can access real-time traffic conditions and the latest public transport information at transport.vic.gov.au

Earlier:

A nationwide Telstra outage has impacted the entire V-Line network, with “significant impacts” to Colac and district commuters.

A statement from V-Line this afternoon said no trains were able to run on the network and were being held at their nearest station due to the communications blackout.

Meanwhile, Telstra is still investigating the cause of the outage that affected thousands of customers this morning.

Telstra told the Colac Herald that crews were making “good progress restoring services”.

About 90 per cent of calls and data are now reportedly flowing successfully across the network just before 10am, while intermittent issues are ongoing with restoration works still underway. 

“A very limited coach replacement service is in place and passengers are asked to avoid travel until further notice,” V-Line said.

“Passengers are encouraged to check on the V-Line website and app for the latest information.

“We thank passengers for their patience and understanding while we work to restore services as soon as possible.”

Transport Victoria’s signals team is continuing to monitor conditions and will adjust traffic lights to assist with bus movements.

Motorists are asked to be vigilant for extra pedestrians and buses around V-Line train stations.

Commuters can check Transport Victoria for real-time traffic conditions.

At a press conference this morning, Telstra CFO Michael Ackland said “we do not yet know the root cause” of the outage which saw Telstra customers experience “intermittent issues with some mobile calls and data sessions”.

Mr Ackland said the disruption was not being treated as malicious.

Telstra identified an issue affecting some nodes in their network at about 4.30am this morning. 

These nodes, which are essentially servers that keep time, were not operating or synchronising as expected, Mr Ackland said.

The nodes are located in Telstra data centres in centralised areas such as Melbourne and Sydney. 

Mr Ackland could not provide an estimated timeline on how long it would take to rectify, and that it “could take some time before we are not seeing any intermittent outages”.

He encouraged customers having trouble connecting or making calls to try again.

Depending on how their call is routed through the network, it may work on another attempt.

Where possible, he also recommended customers at home or in the office to use their wi-fi networks. 

Triple Zero calls were not affected by the outage, with emergency calls following different settings in the Telstra network. 

Mr Ackland confirmed Telstra had received a small number of reports and were conducting welfare checks in the event that any Triple Zero calls failed. 

“Australia can absolutely have faith in its biggest Telco, that being Telstra,” Mr Ackland said.