The fault wasn't restricted to iiNet customers, other resellers of Telstra's service were affected too.
It was initially reported that all iiNet ADSL customers in NSW were disconnected, but the company later claimed the number was half that.
"Initial estimates as to the extent of this fault were overstated. Less than half of NSW ADSL clients are affected by this outage," iiNet said in a statement.
The outage lasted from approximately 6:30pm until midnight. A Telstra spokeswoman confirmed the fault was caused at Telstra's end.
"There was a power supply failure in Pitt St. at 6:07pm. Although the power was restored an hour later, there was a bank up of people trying to get back on to the network," she told ZDNet Australia.
Only ten percent of iiNet's customers were located within Australia's eastern states as of December last year; the majority of its customers are based in Western Australia.
The Telstra spokeswoman played down the affect the outage had on customers, saying it had only affected a small number.
Telstra are still investigating the incident.
This article is incorrect in so far as it inplies that only ADSL customers were affected.
I am a BigPond CABLE subscriber and the cable service was totally unavailable on Wed night.
I suggest to you that "Telstra spokeswoman" who "played down the affect the outage had on customers, saying it had only affected a small number" is a liar, if that's what she really said.
The message on the BigPong cable support hotline had 3 separate messages. One said that there was a nationwide problem acccessing user account information (I think - can't remember whole text).
The second message said something like "there is a problem with cable customers connecting in all states except NSW".
The third message said something like "there is a problem with cable customers connecting in NSW".
Yes, I know. It's weird. There was no mention at all of ADSL. If telstra tells you the problem was restricted to a small number of ADSL clients, they're lying (it wouldn't be the first time they've deliberately down-played infrastructure problems).
I'm not sure if any of your other readers have reported this, but BigPong also have a whole series of other problems. For example the BigPong mail server has been flaky for many MONTHS - often denying connections, requiring re-authentication etc.
The web server which handles their "new" usage meter is running IIS 4.0 (!) - I know because I received some broken redirection page when they first introduced the usage meter.
The BigPong News server is a complete mess. Apart from the fact that they nearly got the usenet death penalty applied, there are other problems, in that postings are not acknowledged properly, resulting in many repeated attempts to post and many duplicate posts. From comments in the support news group, Telstra appears to be denying there is a problem in some forums and tacitly admitting the problem to some users privately.
Basically it's the usual BigPong mess - you get a different story depending on who you talk to. In the mean time the BigPong news groups are dying a slow death. They've made it clear they don't consider news groups an essential service - I think they're hoping their new customers don't know anything about usenet, so therefore won't complain about the fact that telstra can't even run a news service properly. It's really sad. I have never seen an ISP so badly managed...
Well that's got something off my chest. I have no alternative Cable access in my area and it's just so diabolically frustrating dealing with a company which basically just doesn't give a sh*t about a quality service.