PSA: Telstra offering free mobile data to all customers tomorrow April 3rd, 2016

After a series of outages in recent weeks, Australia’s largest telco Telstra are offering customers a day of free data tomorrow, April 3rd 2016. This is the second Sunday so far this year that Telstra are having a #DataDay, and there’s been plenty of warning that this one was coming so I hope you’ve had your downloads queued up! If you’re a Telstra customer go ahead and make the most of the day - stream, share, download, upload, side-load (err) as much as you like. During the last data day on February 14th, there were many reports of severe congestion on the Telstra network, and we can only hope Telstra are better prepared this time around.

It is worth noting that as Daylight Savings ends overnight in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory, these states put the clocks back an hour at 3am and will have a 25 hour long “data day” to enjoy.

So while you’re patiently waiting to begin those downloads as the clock strikes midnight, check out these tips from Trevor Long on “How to (legally) make the most of Telstra’s free data day.”

PSA: Telstra’s mobile network is down nationwide... again

For the second time in six weeks, the Telstra mobile network has gone down all around Australia. These reports have been rolling in for nearly an hour as I type this, and the only public statement Telstra have provided comes from their Twitter page and is as follows: 

We are aware of an issue affecting some of our mobile customers. We’re working to fix this as soon as possible. Sorry for inconvenience.

- Telstra (@Telstra)

March 17, 2016

Hardly useful when millions of customers want to know where their service has gone… Some report just 4G is down, most can’t make calls, and many say their service isn’t working at all - with their phone reporting “SOS only.” 

Poor Telstra customers. Here’s to hoping the outage doesn’t last much longer, and that customers are compensated in a more meaningful way than they were when this happened last month.

Meanwhile, I’ll sit back and watch social media explode over this incident all while enjoying my reliable connection to the Optus mobile network. 

Update: Nearly an hour later with no reason or explanation from Telstra. The closest thing to any relevant update comes from Trevor Long on Twitter: 

My information is that @telstra has around 4000 sites down. Around half their network is my understanding #telstra

- Trevor Long (@trevorlong)

March 17, 2016

According to the latest information from OzTowers, Telstra have 7455 active sites around the nation (as of writing this on 17th March 2016.) 4000 down is indeed just over 50%, but when you consider the load on the remaining ~3500 due to the congestion as a result of the outage, I daresay the number of customers who can get online at the moment is significantly less than 50%.