Optus and Primus fibre cables in Queensland have been severed in a construction accident, cutting the Internet connections to potentially thousands of customers.

The outage, as yet unconfirmed by the telcos, occurred shortly after a failure in Optus' Stanthorpe Point of Presence (POP) which affected coastal and inland transmission links.

A spokesperson at Highway 1 said the outage was not part of schedule maintenance for later this month to repair existing cable damages.

Users reported a failure in inbound traffic from 7.30AM today.

Telcos also reported widespread failures across the state's fixed phone network.

Computerworld could not connect to several Queensland telephone numbers when calls were placed at 9.30AM today.

Optus and Primus did not return calls at the time of publication.