RIGHT across the country millions of Australians and businesses were impacted by the Optus outage on Wednesday including in Hamilton, affecting both broadband and mobile connectivity.

Customers were unable to make or receive calls or use the internet for more than 10 hours due to the major nationwide outage.

In a statement on Optus’ website, Australia’s second largest telecommunications company, it said the telco was aware of “an issue impacting Optus Mobile, Fixed Internet and Phone services” (but) that they were “working to restore services as quickly as possible” and apologised to its customers.

“We understand connectivity is important and apologise for any inconvenience caused,” they said.

Optus said their engineers were working to investigate the network fault that was impacting Optus customers.

Metropolitan train services that utilise communications networks for signal functions were also impacted.

Federal communications minister, Michelle Rowland, said initial investigations pointed to a “deep network problem” and one that was significant.

Triple zero calls were not possible via landlines, with customers told if they needed to report an emergency to do so using their mobile phones - or suggested “finding a family member or neighbour with an alternative device”.

The phone lines at Western District Health Service (WDHS), including at Coleraine Acute & Valley View Nursing Home, Wannon Hostel, and Penshurst District Health Service were among numerous hospital switchboards that were down across the country.

Incoming callers were asked to use an alternative mobile phone number and to keep calls brief.

The WDHS website asked that people be mindful that while a normal hospital switchboard can handle dozens of calls, a mobile phone line was far more limited.

Local sporting goods store owner, Keven Quinn of SportsPower, Hamilton, said his business was impacted through not being able to use the EFTPOS machine.

“It’s a massive interruption to our business,” he said.

“You can work your way around it - it’s just a bit inconvenient for us and our customers.

“99 per cent of customers are pretty good - they just duck up to the bank to pay cash - or direct debit.

“It’s out of our hands - but most customers are fantastic.”

Wannon MP Dan Tehan said the unfortunate incident had a significant impact on numerous individuals throughout the Wannon region.

“The ones bearing the brunt of the consequences are families and small businesses,” he said.

“At a time when households and businesses are grappling with the challenges of rising living costs, this extensive service disruption has occurred at the most inopportune moment.

“It is imperative that Optus maintains transparent and ongoing communication with its customers and the wider Australian community, detailing their efforts and the cause of this problem.”

Once the source of the problem was fixed, most businesses gradually had their services restored from 2pm with customers slowly able to make and receive calls again.

On Thursday, minister Rowland announced a government inquiry into the Optus outage.

Optus has offered to provide affected customers with 200GB of extra data as compensation for the outage but has been sharply criticised as it is unclear who will be eligible or how it will work for customers who already have unlimited data.