An Optus spokesman said the company was working to fix the problem, but could not yet answer questions about the cause of the problem.
“Optus is aware of an issue that may be impacting some of our mobile and internet customers,” the spokesman said.
“We are currently working to identify the cause and apologise for any inconvenience. In case of an emergency, customers can still call 000.”
Speaking on ABC radio, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said she had not yet spoken to Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, and did not know what was happening. However she said consumers would be very anxious.
“It appears to be nationwide affecting broadband services and mobile … that is what we call deep in the network,” the Minister said.
“[That is] certainly one that would require the full resources of Optus just to be thrown at it at pace.”
Ms Rowland said the government had no information about whether it was a cyberattack. Optus famously suffered a hugely damaging data breach a year ago, which did not affect the operations of Optus’ network.
Organisations deemed to be operating national critical infrastructure, including telecommunication operators are covered by relatively new laws, which can result in punishment for executives if insufficient cyber protection causes significant outages.
While Optus has claimed 000 services still work, a phone on an Optus reseller network, tested by The Australian Financial Review, failed to connect when 000 was called.
The outage will be a hugely damaging blow to Optus and its leadership, after it suffered extensive negative fallout from a cyberattack last September.
A study earlier this year found its brand had suffered a $1.2 billion blow, and Ms Bayer Rosmarin had spent the early part of the year rebuilding her personal image, after bruising exchanges with the government in the hack aftermath. This included a first public explanation at the Financial Review’s Business Summit in March.
The company’s pledge to be transparent about the causes of the hack – widely reported to have been due to a simply fixable internal error – however didn’t materialise, as it elected to keep an independent review into the incident by Deloitte private.
The board of Optus’ parent company Singtel has been in Australia this week, and previously stood strongly behind Ms Bayer Rosmarin’s leadership during the data breach fallout.