A significant outage at Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications company, caused widespread disruptions on Wednesday, affecting train services, mobile coverage, and payment systems across the nation. The incident, which began at approximately 04:30 local time, also triggered an investigation into a number of emergency calls that may not have been connected.
Telstra's Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland stated that time-keeping servers at data centers in Sydney and Melbourne were responsible for the failure, though the precise cause is still under investigation. He confirmed that the issue was not believed to be a cyber attack. Ackland apologized for the disruption and assured customers that approximately 90% of the network was restored within six hours.
Communications Minister Anika Wells confirmed that welfare checks were being conducted for about three dozen calls to emergency services that did not go through. She noted that the core triple-zero system remained operational, but the Australian Communication and Media Authority, the country's telco regulator, will investigate the outage. Ackland added that Telstra was specifically investigating whether the outage impacted triple zero calls.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the outage as "deeply concerning." The disruptions had a cascading effect on various sectors. In Victoria, all regional train services were canceled, and some regional services in New South Wales experienced disruptions. National freight services were also impacted. Additionally, approximately 80,000 businesses using the Tyro app reported payment system outages.
This incident draws parallels to a previous outage in September involving Optus, Australia's second-largest telecommunications company, which left thousands unable to call emergency services for 13 hours and was linked to three deaths. Optus also faced penalties after another outage in 2023 affecting emergency call access.
Ackland reiterated Telstra's commitment to network resilience, cybersecurity, and redundancy, acknowledging the complexity of the network and the occasional occurrence of such issues. He maintained that Australia could place its trust in its largest telco, stating, "Australia can absolutely have faith in its biggest telco... we take these outages very very seriously."