Before you start: Check
telstra.com.au/outages (or your provider's outage page) on your phone first — if the street's out, no amount of restarting helps.
Steps
- Restart first. Switch the modem off at the power point (or unplug its power lead). Leave it off for a full 30 seconds.
- Switch it back on and wait 3–5 minutes. The lights will flash while it reconnects — that's normal. You want a steady light (usually blue or green on Telstra Smart Modems). Red or orange for more than 10 minutes means it still isn't connected.
- Try a device that's close to the modem. If that works but the far end of the house doesn't, it's a coverage problem, not an outage.
- Still nothing? Factory reset with the pin. On the back of the modem there's a tiny recessed hole marked Reset. With the modem on, push a paperclip or SIM tool into it and hold for about 10 seconds until the lights flash or change, then let go.
- Wait 5–10 minutes. Telstra modems download their settings automatically after a reset — don't unplug it during this.
- Reconnect your devices using the Wi-Fi name and password printed on the sticker on the modem — a factory reset puts them back to those.
If that didn't work
- If you'd changed the Wi-Fi name or password yourself, everything in the house will need to be reconnected — that's the price of a factory reset, so try the plain restart twice before going there.
- Only one device won't connect? Restart that device, then "forget" the Wi-Fi network on it and join again.
When to stop and call
The light stays red/orange after a reset with no outage reported, coverage is poor in parts of the house, or you have a mesh/extender setup that's stopped talking to the modem.
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