Two days of free V\/Line travel have been announced for regional passengers after this week’s nationwide Telstra outage brought the state’s regional rail network to a standstill.<\/p>\n
Premier Jacinta Allan confirmed this morning travel on all V\/Line services would be free on Monday and Tuesday as part of a compensation package for commuters caught up in the more than 24-hour shutdown.<\/p>\n
She said V\/Line would also reimburse passengers who incurred additional travel costs during the disruption and called on Telstra to match those payments.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is completely unacceptable that so many Victorians were stuck without an essential service for so long,\u201d Allan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis can\u2019t be the end of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cV\/Line will reimburse regional rail passengers who incurred extra costs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expect Telstra to match it, dollar for dollar.\u201d<\/p>\n
The disruption began early Wednesday after a nationwide Telstra outage knocked out critical communications used by the National Train Communications System, forcing V\/Line to suspend services across the state.<\/p>\n
While Telstra restored its network later that day, V\/Line chief executive William Tieppo said engineers discovered the restored 4G train radio network was interfering with the trains’ satellite backup communications, preventing services from safely resuming.<\/p>\n
Telstra fixed the programming issue overnight. V\/Line and the Australian Rail Track Corporation then carried out safety testing on Thursday morning to confirm the communications systems were stable before trains gradually returned to service from noon.<\/p>\n
Tieppo said V\/Line and the Australian Rail Track Corporation would undertake a comprehensive review with Telstra to understand exactly what caused the communications failure and whether changes were needed.<\/p>\n
Allan said the focus must now turn to preventing a repeat of the outage.<\/p>\n
\u201cVictoria expects more than just compensation from Telstra,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat we really want is change.<\/p>\n
\u201cAustralians have endured too many major outages \u2013 and it\u2019s always country people who bear the brunt.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe telcos must lift their game.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s time they caught up with how critical their networks have become to our essential services.\u201d<\/p>\n
V\/Line services returned to normal on Friday after operating at reduced capacity on Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two days of free V\/Line travel have been announced for regional passengers after this week’s nationwide Telstra outage brought the state’s regional rail network to a standstill. Premier Jacinta Allan confirmed this morning travel on all V\/Line services would be free on Monday and Tuesday as part of a compensation package for commuters caught up […]<\/p>\n