UPDATE: April 6, 2016, 3:37 p.m. AEST The total amount of data downloaded on Apr. 3 was 2,686 terabytes, according to Telstra.

UPDATE: April 3, 2016, 7:03 p.m. AEST As of 4 p.m. AEST, Australians had downloaded more than 1,841 terabytes of data, a Telstra spokesperson confirmed, exceeding the amount consumed on the Feb. 14 free data day.

"The network has performed well so far today and the overwhelming majority of our customers have enjoyed what we expect will be the biggest day of data usage we have ever experienced," he said.

To make up for yet another outage on its network, Australia's biggest telecommunications provider offered its customers a day of entirely free mobile data. Thanks to slow and sticky network speeds, however, the Sunday event did not become the Telstra lovefest the company may have hoped for.

The 24-hour data bacchanal was the second Telstra has offered this year. The first occurred in February following an outage of mobile and Internet services on Feb. 9 that was blamed on "embarrassing human error." Aussies were not shy with their sorry gift, making their way through a whopping 1,841 terabytes of data on Feb. 14.

Sunday's additional freebie was offered after an afternoon of data and call problems on Mar. 17. That time around, the issue was chalked up to an offshore roaming problem that clogged the network. Not a week later, calls went down again for some customers.

Needless to say, Telstra users were not feeling too kindly towards the telco, but many still logged on bright and early Sunday, ready to spend a gratis day online. Thanks to the change to Daylight Saving time Sunday, a number of states even got a 25th hour with which to download the entire Internet.

Free Telstra data day today. Might tether my laptop and download every full TV series I can think of. — Smallzy (@Smallzy) April 3, 2016

By Sunday afternoon, however, customers in some areas were suggesting on social media that the network was feeling the strain, grinding plans for boundless streaming to a halt.

Not really worth using any data on @Telstra, today... pic.twitter.com/6gI5Yh01dt — Adam Baxter (@voltagex) April 3, 2016

I call this one, "Telstra's Free Data Day" pic.twitter.com/ErWSIByR9y — Tali Aualiitia (@taliaualiitia) April 3, 2016

.@Telstra guys thanks for free data day,but 4G network has been so slow I can't even stream through the @NRL app pic.twitter.com/iQLFho45fC — H (@HDragonsFan) April 3, 2016

Officially, Telstra played down speed issues. "As we forecasted, there may be pockets of high demand in some areas during the day if a large number of customers are in a single area," a spokesperson told Mashable Australia. "This may cause periods of slower speeds however we don't expect this to be widespread and voice calls should not be affected."

@NexusIndigo We are seeing significant demand and have implemented software changes to stretch resources in the area 1/2 — Telstra (@Telstra) April 3, 2016

@NexusIndigo to provide some relief.We apologise for any inconvenience caused. -Simone 2/2 — Telstra (@Telstra) April 3, 2016

While Telstra claims the series of outages in early 2016 are unrelated, they have nevertheless dented consumer confidence in the brand. For many, reliable service is clearly more useful than free data. After the latest outage, which affected 3% of customers, the company promised "a major review" would be undertaken.

On Free Data Day I celebrated by leaving Telstra. 💅🏼 — Leena (@LeenaVanD) April 3, 2016

According to Telstra, we'll find out Monday if the country has surpassed February's free data 1,841 terabytes download record, or whether network congestion slowed the nation down.

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