As the clock ticked midnight in California, Apple fans around the world made their way to the Apple Store web site and app, as well as to many telco sites, in an effort to get their hands on an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. There were problems on many fronts, as demand trumped availability.

Here’s an example from the UK.

And from Australia:

Australian iPhone buyers crashed the websites of all three major telcos this afternoon in a rush to pre-order Apple’s two new smartphones. Pre-orders for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus were due to begin at 5pm this afternoon but demand proved too great for Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and even Apple websites, many of which failed to load at all.

The fact that these outages are spread evenly across the web, telcos, Apple, and even across continents tells me this is about demand, not about poor provisioning.

Amazing.