Victoria's regional rail network remains at standstill after Telstra outage

V/Line train services remained suspended after a national telecommunications outage. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)

Limited bus services are running as V/Line services remain suspended following the nationwide Telstra outage yesterday.

Thousands of passengers across Victoria yesterday faced hours-long waits as V/Line struggled to source enough replacement buses.

V/Line says it hopes services will be back in service sometime today.

Victoria's regional rail network remains at a standstill following a nationwide telecommunications outage yesterday that stranded commuters.

V/Line said today's morning peak services will remain affected, with "very limited" replacement bus services operating.

The operator is advising passengers not to travel on V/Line services today if possible.

"We acknowledge this has been inconvenient to many people and thank passengers for their patience as work continues to safely restore services," a V/Line spokesperson said.

V/Line platforms at Southern Cross Station were eerily empty on Thursday morning as services remained suspended. (ABC News: Ethan White)

V/Line chief executive William Tieppo said he was confident services would resume today once the communication system used by trains is fixed.

"We're hoping that we'll be up and running sometime today, but we'll know that in the next couple of hours."

Mr Tieppo said V/Line had found it challenging to source enough replacement buses given the unexpected nature of the shutdown.

The cause of yesterday's outage was a software defect that caused time synchronisation issues across Telstra's network.

V/Line says limited replacement coaches will be available. (ABC News: Danielle Bonica)

But while Telstra said the company had identified and resolved the issue by 4pm yesterday, V/Line services remained suspended overnight and into this morning.

It meant commuters were left waiting hours for replacement buses at train stations last night, with the coaches also impacted by the telecommunications outage.

ARTC advised V/Line that Telstra's ongoing telecommunications reliability issues mean it is not yet safe to resume train operations.

Mr Tieppo said the network outage interfered with the SIM cards used on each train to communicate with the wider network.

"That's predominantly a contract that's between the Australian Rail Track Corporation and Telstra, and we obviously get that service through ARTC and Telstra," he told 774 ABC Melbourne radio yesterday.

V/Line migrated its essential train communication services to Telstra 4G in 2024, following the shutdown of the 3G network.

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