Optus is taking a scythe to One.Tel's landline services with customers finding themselves barred from making national, international and fixed-to-mobile calls.
Optus supplies One.Tel with wholesale long distance capacity.
"One.Tel is unable to pay us for our services so we've largely ceased supply of that service," an Optus spokesperson told ZDNet.
One.Tel's landline customers can still make local calls, which are provided by the Telstra network.
Optus had initially threatened to pull the plug immediately on One.Tel's 125,000 mobile customers but then backed down, giving them a week to make alternative arrangements.
The decision to terminate landline services came from a different business division, Optus's representative said.
"The consumer and multimedia division made the decision to cease wholesale supply because it wasn't commercially viable to continue doing so."
On the other hand, "the mobile division decided they could support the One.Tel network for a week," she said.
Asked why Optus hadn't notified customers of the impending landline slash, she said: "It's actually One.Tel's responsibility to tell customers."
Optus also claims not to have had access to these customers' phone numbers.
"I think it would've been nice for Optus to have let customers know," Melissa Norman of infomediary service Phonechoice said.
"Not for them to wake up one day and find out they can't make these calls."
