A widespread Telstra outage in Australia has been linked to a "tragic death" in South Australia, according to a federal senator, as the telecommunications giant acknowledges that hundreds of Triple Zero emergency calls were impacted. Telstra is also warning customers about a new scam targeting people in the wake of the disruption.
South Australian Liberal Senator Kerrynne Liddle claimed her office received a report of an elderly individual who died after allegedly being unable to connect to Triple Zero during a life-or-death emergency. "This death of an elderly South Australian represents a devastating failure for their family," Liddle stated on Wednesday night. "Our thoughts are with them. No Australian should ever be unable to connect to Triple Zero when their life depends on it."
Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland confirmed that 300 Triple Zero calls were affected by the technical failure, which stemmed from an issue with timers at the company's Sydney and Melbourne data centers. He added that Telstra was unable to reach 79 of those callers when attempting to follow up. South Australia Police have stated they are not aware of any deaths resulting from the outage.
In response to the outage, which left millions of customers without phone service, mobile data, or access to electronic payment systems, Telstra issued an urgent warning to customers about scam calls. "We have seen reports of customers receiving calls from fraudsters trying to take advantage of this moment," Ackland said. He advised customers to hang up on any suspicious calls claiming to be from Telstra regarding the outage and to call the company back directly.
Telstra reported on Thursday morning that progress had been made in resolving the secondary issue affecting Triple Zero calls, reducing the occurrence of errors by approximately 90 percent, with efforts continuing to eliminate the problem entirely. The company's welfare check process remains active, and customers experiencing issues are advised to wait for the call to connect through an alternative network or to redial using a different phone.
The outage has also had a significant impact on Victoria's regional rail network, with V/Line services shut down for a second consecutive day, stranding hundreds of commuters. No estimated time for service restoration has been provided.
