Telstra to plans another free data day after outage

Australia’s largest operator Telstra will offer customers another free data day as an apology for its third mobile network outage in less than a month.

Telstra CEO Andy Penn said he is “deeply disappointed” and acknowledged that multiple outages in such a short period is “absolutely unacceptable.

The outage took place on Thursday, and was caused by a large number of customers who were disconnected due to an international connectivity issue all reconnecting at once.

An estimated 8 million subscribers were affected, or around half of Telstra’s total mobile customer base.

While services were restored for most customers within two hours, the company was still responding to customer complaints over Twitter as of Friday with a message that the company was progressively restoring mobile services, the report notes.

The disruption followed another outage affecting millions of customers  – which led the operator to offer customers a free data day by way of an apology – and another affecting around 500,000 pre-paid customers earlier this month.

Also last week, Telstra announced it has appointed former Nokia CEO Stephen Elopto the newly created role of group executive for technology, innovation and strategy.

In his new role Elop will help Telstra meet its ambitions of becoming a world-class technology company, Penn said in a statement.

“Stephen will immediately add major firepower to our team with his extensive and deep technology experience and an innate sense of customer expectations. He is a recognized international technology leader and strategist from across a range of global organizations,” he said.