National mobile service disruption leaves customers in SOS mode
Updated ,first published
Vodafone says it has fully restored its mobile network after a power outage at one of its hubs on Thursday morning cut off services to millions of customers across Australia.
The operator, owned by TPG Telecom, said a power issue at one of its network hubs at around 8am AEST triggered the outage and all services have since been restored. He said he was looking into the incident and working to strengthen his network against a repeat.
More than 8,000 reports were submitted to peak monitoring site Downdetector, and affected users went into SOS mode in most capital cities and many regional centres.
Affected users reported their phones went into SOS mode in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra, as well as regional centres. Customers of Kogan Mobile, which operates on the Vodafone network, were also disconnected.
Vodafone’s own online network health checker failed during the outage and returned error messages.
The company did not say how many customers were affected.
“Following the outage early this morning, all Vodafone network services have been fully restored,” a spokesman said. The company said some customers experienced intermittent connectivity when services were restored and apologized for the outage.
“Customers who were unable to access the Vodafone network were able to access triple zero by connecting to other available mobile networks during this period,” the spokesperson said.
Consumers’ peak body, Communications Consumer Action Network Australia, said the outage was a fresh reminder that mobile networks were not being held to the same reliability standards as other essential services.
“Every major outage leaves consumers disconnected from work, family, banking, government services and essential communications,” said Carol Bennett, the network’s CEO. “These cuts are not just an inconvenience, they have real economic and social consequences.”
Bennett said customers deserve timely information about what failed and when services will be restored, and called for minimum reliability standards for mobile networks. The group said a survey it commissioned found 76 percent of consumers supported such rules and that legislation before parliament could be amended to introduce such rules.
The outage occurred less than two weeks before new rules came into force requiring telcos to keep mandatory outage records, giving customers clearer reporting on major outages, it said.
The outage comes as Australian telecommunications companies remain under intense scrutiny over repeated price increases, the reliability of their networks and emergency calls. A Senate committee spent much of late 2025 and early this year grilling major carriers after Optus failed on September 18, leaving hundreds of customers unable to reach Triple Zero in South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and parts of New South Wales. The 14-hour outage caused by a failed firewall upgrade was initially linked to four deaths, but Optus later said police attributed two deaths to that failure.
Vodafone also faced its own reckoning; CEO Iñaki Berroeta told senators in December that the two deaths were linked to Triple Zero failures on the Vodafone network, both linked to older Samsung phones running outdated software. The inquiry’s chair, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, accused the industry of a “cover-up” over how slowly one of these deaths was disclosed.
Communications watchdog Australian Communications and Media Authority is investigating the Optus outage and the federal government has ordered a wider review of the laws governing Triple Zero. The new rules now require telecommunications companies to report network outages to the regulator and emergency services in real time.
Wider frustration with telcos is also growing, with complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman rising by 5.7 per cent compared to the last quarter.
“When people can’t use their mobile phones, it disrupts access to basic needs and prevents people from living their lives,” said telecommunications industry ombudsman Cynthia Gebert. He said the problem was exacerbated for customers in regional, rural and remote areas where there were fewer alternatives.
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David Swan is the technology editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor of The Australian newspaper.Connect with: X or email.
