Mini-VODAFAIL hits Australia

In the year 2010, Vodafone Australia's networks suddenly became horribly unreliable. Dropped calls became common, outages semi-regular.

Now the carrier has again experienced a too-big-to-miss network issue, after customers Australia-wide struggled to make calls today.

Your correspondent couldn't make calls from around 12:00 to 14:00, despite my phone rating radio signal at four out of five bars.

The carrier quickly moved to assure customers all would soon be well.

We're working to resolve ASAP an issue causing intermittent disruption to voice services for some customers. (1/3)

— Vodafone Australia (@VodafoneAU) March 15, 2017

We expect this to be resolved shortly. Data and text services are not impacted. (2/3)

— Vodafone Australia (@VodafoneAU) March 15, 2017

We apologise to customers for any inconvenience and thank them for their patience. We will provide further updates soon. (3/3)

— Vodafone Australia (@VodafoneAU) March 15, 2017

And Lo! A couple of hours later, things were back to normal. Just in time for your correspondent to jump on a conference call!

An earlier issue which caused intermittent disruption to voice services for some customers has now been resolved. (1/3)

— Vodafone Australia (@VodafoneAU) March 15, 2017

The issue, which was caused by a fault during scheduled work on the network, resulted in voice traffic congestion from 10.30am AEDT. (2/3)

— Vodafone Australia (@VodafoneAU) March 15, 2017

The issue was fully resolved by 2.30pm. (3/3)

— Vodafone Australia (@VodafoneAU) March 15, 2017

Vodafone will be hoping this was a one-off, as its 2010 problems cost it hundreds of thousands of customers, then required an extensive and expensive network rebuild. The carrier has since clawed back most of those customers, but has also endured a seven-hour outage in September 2016 and a shorter mess in 2014.

Reliability is especially important to the company at this time, because it will soon offer terrestrial broadband services on Australia's National Broadband Network. It can ill-afford more outages or brown-outs in the lead-up to that launch, lest it again acquire a reputation for unreliable service. ®