The carrier’s heavy promotion of aggressively priced wireless broadband and iPhone 3G plans has resulted in the network being overloaded with users, leading to widespread performance problems and frequent outages. The worst of the complaints have come from Sydney, where users have been forced to drop down to the inferior 2G network just so they can receive calls. But customers around the country are reporting problems including call dropouts and slow internet speeds.

The vast majority of people in Australia experiencing the iPhone 3G problems are Optus customers. Many have reported their experiences on the Fairfax MashUp blog, as well as local Apple community MacTalk.

After months of silence on the issue — during which Optus has continued its campaign to win the $4.7 billion national broadband contract — the Optus CEO revealed yesterday his team was in contact with Futuris’s new leadership and close to making a decision on whether to pursue court action.

The high page count stems from Optus and Telstra unnecessarily itemising each individual piece of web data downloaded using the phone, instead of having a single usage figure for each day. One customer estimated that if he had used his full 850MB allowance his bill would have been more than 80 pages.

The final leg of Project Reitz, the telco’s ambitious program to consolidate its billing and customer relationship management systems, has stalled, as it has yet to finalise selection of software and systems integration suppliers to complete the project.

Optus has experienced a fresh set of problems for 3G mobile users, with many customers simply unable to make calls or access the 3G Internet. The 8 hour outage, which affected NSW, Victoria and Queensland, was compounded by bad advice from customer service staff, who issued annoyed consumers with incorrect instructions for reconnecting to the network.

Optus spokeswoman Elizabeth Greene confirmed that there were issues with the network in Sydney and Melbourne, but did not know what the cause of the issues was. Customers in Melbourne said the 3G network had been down for several hours, while the GSM network appeared to be intact.