Optus has advised its customers this afternoon that it is suffering an outage affecting access to international websites and some gaming platforms.
Customers will notice that certain home automation services – such as Sensibo and Arlo Security cameras – are not working. Other services like Netflix, Plex and the like appear to be sporadically affected.
According to reports on Twitter, the outage has been ongoing since early this afternoon, but Optus has only acknowledged the issue more recently:
We’re aware of an issue currently impacting access to international websites and gaming platforms. Our tech team are currently working on resolving this. We aim to provide an update as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience.
— Optus (@Optus) May 22, 2019
Most local services aren’t impacted, and calls / SMS appear to be working without issue. Home broadband customers (including yours truly) have limited connectivity, with local services working okay (Google, ABC News, Ausdroid) but international services are not. Even Netflix, which has local peering arrangements with most ISPs, cannot be reached on Optus at the time of writing.
We spoke with Optus this evening, and received this comment (largely in line with the tweet above) around 8pm:
“Our technical team is working through an issue impacting access to some websites. We aim to provide an update as soon as possible and apologise to customers for any inconvenience and thank them for their patience while we fully restore affected services.”
Update 23/05/2019 07:00am:
We’re advised by Optus this morning that service has been restored. An Optus spokesperson gave us the following comment after technicians worked overnight to restore services:
Some Optus customers may have experienced an issue affecting access to some websites, which has now been fully restored.
Our technical teams identified an issue which saw some international traffic being affected.
Optus apologises to customers who were affected and thanks them for their patience while services were restored at around midnight this morning.
For what it’s worth, my Optus 4G mobile service can now access Netflix and our home automation gear is now working properly whereas last night it wasn’t.
If your service is still not functioning correctly it may be worth restarting your phone or home broadband service to see if that gets it working – it did here.
Update 23/05/2019 4:00pm:
Some customers experienced further outages today, though Optus now assures us that all issues have been resolved and everything should be working normally:
Optus is continuing to test and monitor performance following an overnight issue that affected some customer access to some international internet, streaming and gaming services.
We are pleased to report that access to those platforms and websites remains stable, however, we encourage customers to contact us if they have other issues they require assistance with.
Having similar issues with Optus again this afternoon…
Funnily enough so are we, dropping out fairly regularly this evening.
I’m in Hope Island 4212 and Netflix and Stan both continue to buffer all the time on Optus mobile broadband.
I call shenanigans. Optus data services operate at the lower end of acceptable in a regular basis. Thinking back, this is a near annual event. At least their network status team remain true to form “our services aren’t working but we aren’t going to say anything and let you believe it’s your devices.”
My browsing was stalling lately on my 4g, loading bar stopped about a quarter way until you refresh then works. Some sites couldn’t be reached at all. I thaught it was my phone playing up the last week, guess not.
Is it just me, or are all the services mentioned hosted with Amazon Web Services? I’m guessing some bizarre routing or caching issue is at play.
5:30 Thursday evening still can’t get Netflix
Hmm this outage came and went without me even noticing… Weird. Admittedly I was just using Plex and Youtube all night, but they were both on my Xbox which I assume is considered international gaming? Or not? Youtube would be an int service at least. *shrug* All good here! Just checked Netflix!
Netflix still isn’t working when I left the house at 8am today!!!
Its still not working fixed my ass everything is so slow.
It’s still not working! Trying to watch Hayu on Fetch.
Yeah, I do surveys through Rewardia and haven’t been able to do some tonight or have had difficulty with others, I guess this may be why
Still down no internet and home phone.
Yep, no netflix at all tonight!
Can’t access certain sites on both 4g and nbnðŸ˜
Are you sure this is 4G only? I can’t access my yahoo mail and pay TV service on my Optus NBN!!!
NETFLIX IS STILL DOWN :((((
Still down, worst part is I have no other option where I live!
They are an absolute disgrace.
I’m glad that I left horrible floptus for stable Telstra Cable 115mbps down/5.3mbps up and Telstra Mobile
cable doesn’t have speeds higher then 100mbps down and 2.5mbps upload, even business cable does not, it’s rated at different speeds, no need to talk out of your arse.
Concerned citizen
Actually, not true. When we had Telstra cable at our old place we regularly got speeds in excess of 100mbps downstream. Uploads never reached 5mbps though. Maybe two and a bit, tops.
I’ve done Ookla speed test with a business using Telstra Cable and got speeds over 100mbps on several occasions, in the middle of the day!! “So yeah @Telsstra no need to talk out of your arse”!!
Had the problem since early afternoon on home broadband. International websites, IM clients. Initially thought it was my home network. Thanks Ausdroid for letting me know, as Optus didn’t !