UPDATE 4.30pm: Telstra has restored all its services after a widespread interruption hit millions of customers across the country, with thousands of disgruntled customers taking to social media to complain that calls are unavailable.
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Just before 3pm Telstra said it had identified the issue "and services are being restored progressively".
By 4pm all services to its mobile customers had been restore, the telco confirmed.
Telstra's chief operations officer Kate McKenzie said the outage was caused by "human error".
"We apologise right across our customer base. This is an embarrassing human error," she told reporters at a press conference just after 4pm.
"It's not OK. We do not like causing that level of inconvenience to our customers," Ms McKenzie said.
McKenzie said the company would offer affected customers "free data".
: UPDATE 3.45pm: A widespread interruption to Telstra mobile services is being felt across the country, with thousands of disgruntled customers taking to social media to complain that calls are unavailable.
Mobile data is affected as well, including 2G, 3G and 4G services.
Just before 3pm Telstra said it had identified the issue "and services are being restored progressively".
EARLIER: A widespread interruption to Telstra mobile service is being felt across the country, with thousands of disgruntled customers taking to social media to complain that calls are unavailable. Mobile data is affected as well, including 2G, 3G and 4G services.
The Service Status page at Telstra's website has been showing "interruptions" across the board in all major cities since 12.45pm AEDT, claiming an "interruption" may cause difficulties for some customers.
At the time of writing some mobile phones are apparently able to access data and call services, so the interruption is not absolute, but complaints continue to roll in on social media.
On Twitter, Telstra said it was working to resolve the issue soon.
Any Telstra customer should plan ahead to make sure they aren't caught out in need of Google Maps or complex social maneuvering via text message while they're out and about this afternoon.
Affected customers that need to make an emergency call while their service is interrupted will still be able to do so by dialling '112' instead of 000.