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​Vodafone offers free data to Australian customers after network outage

After Vodafone services went down across the country, the telco is extending an olive branch to customers with a weekend of free data.

Claire Reilly Former Principal Video Producer
Claire Reilly was a video host, journalist and producer covering all things space, futurism, science and culture. Whether she's covering breaking news, explaining complex science topics or exploring the weirder sides of tech culture, Claire gets to the heart of why technology matters to everyone. She's been a regular commentator on broadcast news, and in her spare time, she's a cabaret enthusiast, Simpsons aficionado and closet country music lover. She originally hails from Sydney but now calls San Francisco home.
Expertise Space, Futurism, Science and Sci-Tech, Robotics, Tech Culture Credentials
  • Webby Award Winner (Best Video Host, 2021), Webby Nominee (Podcasts, 2021), Gold Telly (Documentary Series, 2021), Silver Telly (Video Writing, 2021), W3 Award (Best Host, 2020), Australian IT Journalism Awards (Best Journalist, Best News Journalist 2017)
Claire Reilly
2 min read

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Vodafone

After a "transmission network failure" knocked out services on Vodafone's network in Australia yesterday, the telco is compensating its customers with a free weekend of data.

Regardless of whether they were affected by the outage, all Vodafone customers have been invited to "use as much data as they like" within Australia this weekend, starting midnight (AEST) Friday, June 20 and running through until 3:00 a.m. (AEST) Monday, June 23, 2014.

The olive branch comes after both Vodafone and Optus suffered network outages across Australia yesterday.

According to Vodafone, its services across Western Australia were affected by a "transmission network failure" in the morning. As the network team set about restoring services at 1:00 p.m. AEST "problems occurred which had an impact on the network nationally" leaving some customers without call, SMS and data services.

While Western Australia was down until 6:30 p.m. AEST, the rest of the network was restored by 4:10 p.m. AEST.

Vodafone Chief Technology Officer Benoit Hanssen said the telco's main priority throughout the day was to restore full network services to all customers as soon as possible.

"We're now investigating to find out the root cause of the problem," said Hanssen. "While no mobile network in the world can guarantee it will never experience occasional issues, we're working to ensure it doesn't happen again.

"We know our customers had a less than perfect network experience today and we want them to know we're sorry.

"Over the past three years our network team has worked tirelessly to ensure our customers have fast and reliable mobile coverage. To apologise we want them to enjoy unlimited data access all weekend."