Telstra mobile phone customers will be given free data this weekend to make amends for a national outage which prevented about 1.5 million people making calls and going online.
Tuesday’s outage happened when a technician made a mistake while moving customers across mobile nodes – a device which helps control the flow of mobile calls connecting to the telco’s larger networks.
For several hours about 10 to 15 per cent of the giant telco’s customers couldn’t make calls, browse the net or check social media during the blackout.
But by the afternoon the nation-wide blackout was resolved.
Telstra’s chief operations officer Kate McKenzie said all mobile phone customers will be given free data this Sunday.
“We’re incredibly disappointed the outage occurred and deeply sorry for the inconvenience we caused,” she said.
“Customers don’t need to do anything to receive the free data, it will happen automatically for all of our mobile customers.”
Several customers took to social media to blast the telco, while others saw it as an opportunity to poke fun.
“You should be ashamed of yourself making those poor kids talk face to face and not be able to go on social media,” @hulkfranco12 posted on Twitter.
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