Optus

Optus is Australia's second-largest telecommunications provider, operating behind Telstra in scale but competing across mobile, fixed broadband, and business communications services throughout the country. A subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) since 2001, Optus holds its own spectrum licenses and operates an independent mobile network with 4G and 5G coverage across Australia's major cities and regional areas. It also provides NBN broadband services, satellite internet for remote customers, and media services including sports broadcasting rights. Optus became the subject of significant public scrutiny following a major nationwide outage in November 2023 that affected approximately ten million customers and disrupted triple zero emergency calls.

Optus operates its own mobile core network and radio access network, with coverage supplementing through roaming agreements in areas where it does not have infrastructure. The My Optus app handles account management, data top-ups, bill payments, and troubleshooting. NBN connections through Optus are delivered over the NBN Co wholesale network, adding a dependency on NBN Co infrastructure for fixed broadband. Business customers use a separate portal and dedicated account management. The 2023 outage, caused by a routing protocol failure following a software upgrade, demonstrated how a configuration error in core network routing software can cascade into a complete service collapse.

Optus outages — particularly broad ones — show up clearly and quickly across the customer base. Mobile calls fail nationally or in large regions. Mobile data becomes completely unavailable despite handsets showing coverage. NBN customers may be separately affected if Optus's NBN infrastructure has issues distinct from the mobile network. My Optus app returns server errors. Customer service hold times spike dramatically during major incidents as alternative access channels are overwhelmed. Prepaid users sometimes cannot top up because the payment processing backend is also unavailable during broad outages.

Outage.gg tracks Optus service disruptions using community reports from customers across Australia. If your Optus mobile or broadband is down, calls are failing, or data is unavailable, the live status page shows real-time impact data.