Customers across Australia are having problems making mobile phone calls and connecting to the internet on Telstra.  The company says it is working out the problem.

"We are very sorry for the interruption to services, either directly to customers or through business and government services," said a Telstra spokesman.

Telstra says Triple Zero calls should not be effected, but New South Wales Police recommend people take no chances in an emergency:  "The advice we have received indicates Telstra customer mobile phone calls to Triple Zero (000) should automatically be connected via another carrier; however, if you are experiencing problems use a landline," NSW Police said in a statement.

The worst of it appears to have started at 10:00 AM AEST when thousands of customers on both the 3G and 4G networks unable to make calls.  The website Aussie Outages showed interruptions in all of the big cities and some of the smaller ones, too:  Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Hobart, Parramatta, Hawthorn, Canberra, and Burwood.

This is Telstra's third major incident of the month, following a big nationwide outage on 1 May and the Triple-Zero outage a few days after that on 4 May.