Phone service back, V/Line trains remain halted

Telstra services have been mostly restored across the country, but V/Line services remain disrupted following a national outage.

The telecommunications provider experienced a major, nationwide outage in the early hours of Wednesday morning but has reported that 90 per cent of the network connectivity has been restored.

It is believed a broken timer at two Telstra data centres in Melbourne and Sydney led to the outage.

Telstra’s chief financial officer Michael Ackland said the exact cause was still being investigated but denied that “malicious activity” was involved.

“The time synchronisation in those nodes wasn’t working as it should. We don’t know why yet,” Ackland said.

“It has been intermittent, but it has been national.

“It doesn’t matter where you’re located, it is not around a particular state, it’s not about regional or metro. It could impact any call that’s been routed through, and it was intermittent.”

The outage has impacted public transport and business operators across the country.

V/Line suspended all services on all lines from about 6am due to the outage, advising customers to defer travel where possible.

An update from the transport provider at 12.30pm confirmed a network stability test would be conducted on the Geelong line in the early afternoon.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke to media on Wednesday morning calling the outage “deeply concerning”.

Full details on affected V/Line services can be found at vline.com.au