Telstra pauses Galaxy Note 7 shipments to Australia
The Aussie telco announced that it had paused shipments of the Galaxy Note 7 hours ahead of Samsung announcing a temporary production halt.
Telstra is the latest carrier partner to pause shipments of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, following in the footsteps of US service providers AT&T and T-Mobile.
An internal memo from the Aussie telco revealed that Samsung has paused supply of new phones following three incidents of the Note 7 phones issued as replacements exploding. Samsung itself announced a production halt on the Note 7 early Monday, after Telstra's initial comments.
The memo, in full, reads:
Please be advised of some updates to the Samsung Note 7 Global Exchange program.
Samsung has temporarily paused the supply of new Galaxy Note7 smartphones following a reported incident in a replacement phone in the US. Samsung is confident in the replacement Note7 and says they have no reason to believe it's not safe. We'll let you know the status of your replacement Note7 as soon as we have more information.
We have contacted impacted customers to advise them of the delay.
In September, Samsung issued a global recall of its Note 7 device after a battery flaw caused dozens of phones to explode. Replacement phones first arrived in Australia on September 22, around three weeks after the recall was first announced.
A Telstra spokesperson said that "we have temporarily paused shipping replacement Galaxy Note 7 smartphones to our customers while Samsung investigates reported incidents in the US. We have asked Samsung to provide us with an update on their investigations as a matter of priority and will update our customers as soon as we learn more.
"In the meantime we are helping customers with loan phones and for those who do not wish to wait for the exchange program a change-over to an alternative smartphone."
With the latest production halt, it's unclear as to when Australians will be able to get their hands on the Note 7.