TELSTRA is once again begging for forgiveness from millions of customers after its network failed for "about half" of its users  on Thursday night.

That equated to 8 million Telstra customers.
 

In a statement released on Friday morning, chief Andrew Penn said while the telco couldn't say what caused the outage, it appeared that a huge volume of customers were kicked off the network simultaneously, which then meant their connections were attempting to rejoin the network at the same time.

As penance, Telstra will give customers a "free data day" on Sunday April 3, 2016.

Customers do not need to do anything to access this free data.

They have, however, responded to the outage by lampooning the communications giant on the internet.

This is the second time in two months the telco has had a massive network failure, followed by a day of free downloads.

In February, about 800,000 Telstra customers lost internet and phone access.

As an apology, Telstra gave customers a free data day the following Sunday.

"While this is unrelated to a network outage last month, the congestion caused by people reconnecting to the network was similar," Mr Pen said.

"Following the last event we started a major process and engineering review of the network, which includes global network experts, to understand how it occurred. 

"We will add the lessons learned from this incident to that review.

"Once again I apologise for any inconvenience we have caused. 

"You expect seamless mobile service with Telstra and it is our responsibility to ensure that is delivered day in, day out."

Telstra customers complaining over another outage

IF you can't get through on your mobile phone, you aren't alone.

Telstra are working to restore mobile phone service to customers, including some in Central Queensland. 

On social media Telstra said they are aware of the issue and are working on it.

A Telstra spokesperson said they are aware of an issue affecting mobile customers, stopping them from making/receiving calls and using data.

"We are looking into the cause of this issue and apologise for the inconvenience this is causing. We are doing everything we can to restore services as soon as possible," they said.

Customers can monitor the service here.