A nationwide Optus outage is wreaking havoc for electric car owners, leaving some public chargers temporarily unavailable.
Evie Networks, which is responsible for a large number of public chargers in Australia, has been affected. It says some of its charging sites are temporarily down unless owners have a physical RFID card.
UPDATE 08/11/2023, 1:10pm – Chargefox has confirmed some of its chargers are impacted by the Optus outage. We’ve added details to the relevant section of the story.
“We wanted to let you know that some of our sites are temporarily unavailable due to an ongoing Optus outage. We understand this may affect your experience, and we’re working diligently to resolve the issue,” the company said in an email to its customers.
Customers who want to charge using Evie Networks sites are able to use their Evie Pass RFID provided they’ve used that specific charging site previously.
Chargefox has confirmed the vast majority of the chargers on its platform are not impacted by the Optus outage, although around 210 plugs of the 2000 public and 3000 private plugs it supports have been hit.
According to ABC News, the Optus outage is affecting about 10 million customers across Australia including 400,000 businesses.
The news outlet reports the outage for a period of time meant Metro Trains was unable to communicate with trains on the Melbourne network, creating chaos for commuters. The issue has since been resolved.
Included in the outage are major hospitals in Melbourne and regional areas, as well as “Victoria’s virtual emergency departments”.
The Victorian Ambulance Union told ABC News that the outages were stopping emergency services from calling back patients. ABC News stresses that 000 is still working however meant for emergencies only.
ABC News reports the outage was first noticed by Optus at 4:05am AEDT.
