Telstra Outages – Here’s What You Need To Know

Telstra Outages

How to check Telstra outage

Telstra is Australia’s biggest telco, with the widest coverage in the country – 99.4 percent of the population. The telco is a leader in the mobile space, and has already reached 50 percent of the population with its 5G coverage, with a plan of reaching 75 percent by the end of this month (June 2021).

Despite these impressive numbers, Telstra customers still experience outages once in a while, regardless of the service they purchase. This means you can experience mobile outages on your SIM only plan, fixed broadband outages, home phone outages, and so on.

Network outages occur for a number of reasons. Most common are maintenance on the part of Telstra, or a general outage in the area. If you experience some connection issues, it’s best to rule these maintenance and outages out before troubleshooting further.

  • To check if there is a Telstra outage or maintenance in your area, visit Telstra Outages here.  
  • You’ll find a range of Telstra services to choose from – Home Internet, home phone, mobile, email, entertainment, and business services.
  • Click on the service you’re experiencing issues with to find out if there is a scheduled maintenance or Telstra outage in your area. Just enter your address and click Search.

What do I do if my broadband stops working?

Fixed broadband networks are more likely to experience maintenance and outages, so it would be wise to start there if your broadband stops working. Follow the steps outlined above to check for such outages in your area, and if you find one, just give Telstra some time to resolve the issue and your broadband will be back up.

If there’s no maintenance or network outage, then use Telstra’s Smart Troubleshooting Tool here to get a handle on the issue. You can also access the Smart Troubleshooting Tool on the My Telstra app and Tesltra 24×7 app:

  • My Telstra app – Open the app > tap Get Help > choose the service you want to troubleshoot (broadband, in this case) > Select Get help with an issue and follow the steps. OR
  • Telstra 24×7 app – Open the app > tap Support > select Smart Troubleshooting.

You can also check some common issues before troubleshooting your broadband, such as:

  • Checking your modem’s power light to ensure it is turned on, as well as checking the power and network cables.
  •  Check your WiFi signal by ensuring the WiFi connected light is on. Also move around your location, farther and farther from your router, to check if the signal gets wors. If so, this would indicate weak WiFi signals, and other solutions like a WiFi extender or repeater might resolve the issue.
  • Restart your modem by disconnecting the power cable for 10 seconds, then plug it back in and wait for 2 minutes for the restart process to complete.
  • If you’re still having issues, contact Telstra for more help.

Telstra recent outages and problems

Even though Telstra has the best coverage in Australia, they still experience frequent outages and problems. A lot of times, this is specific to a certain area – just because you’re experiencing a network outage in your area doesn’t mean another area is also experiencing the same.

And when a telco as large as Telstra experiences a major outage, things can really get out of hand. For instance, Telstra’s 2018 network outage which lasted around 24 hours caused businesses to lose cash sales which couldn’t be processed, as well as ATMs going down, offenders going unmonitored, and more.

You can check Telstra’s recent outages and problems on some third party websites. One popular site is downdetector.com, which tells you the Telstra outages reported in the last 24 hours, as well as the most reported problems and locations.

For instance, according to downtetector.com, the most reported Telstra problems fall under their Internet service with 72 percent of reports. The most reported locations include Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart, Sydney, and more.

You’ll also find user reported problems and outages in the comments section. These could all be used to help you troubleshoot your Telstra network, or decide whether or not Telstra’s coverage and network is right for you.

Final words

Mobile phones have been around for about a generation now. The mobile versions followed what we used to call landlines, and that evolutionary process is an important one to consider. Landlines almost never failed. Whenever you picked up the handset, there was a dial tone there for you.

Generally, mobile services are much the same. What’s changed is how much we rely on our smartphones. These days, if you try and make a phone call and you can’t, you’re livid. Your expectations are set so high, partly because of your experience with landlines but, also, partly because Telstra suffer so few outages, each one that happens is a memorable, newsworthy event.

But before you lose your temper, consider this: Phone companies work in a very competitive field. We offer hundreds of phone plans from a broad array of phone companies on this site. Think about that from Telstra’s standpoint. If they wanted to ensure that there would never be an outage, they would have to spend billions creating effectively a backup network for themselves. And that network might only get used for a few hours per year. The effect of that would be an increase in your phone bill to cover the cost. Very few services are completely 100% always on. That applies to Telco networks, too.