Telstra faces potential penalties in the tens of millions of dollars after a malfunctioning timer in two of its data centre servers triggered a nationwide outage across its mobile and data network, which meant hundreds of people were unable to connect to Triple Zero for hours.
Australia’s largest telecommunications provider is anxiously waiting on the results of nearly 80 welfare checks on its customers, and will be investigated by the industry regulator after an outage crippled its network, brought trains to a halt and affected some small business payment systems.
A Liberal senator said an elderly person from South Australia had died as a result of Telstra’s nationwide outage, though South Australian police said they had received no such reports, and Telstra said it was looking into the claim.
Senator Kerrynne Liddle shared on social media that her office had been told there had been “a tragic death following an apparent failure to connect to Triple Zero during a life-or-death emergency amid Telstra’s nationwide outage”.
Senator Liddle has been contacted for comment and more detail.
Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady was on leave overseas, but has cut her family holiday short to return home later this week.
Telstra chief financial officer and acting chief executive Michael Ackland fronted the media twice on Wednesday. Late in the afternoon, he said the $55 billion company still had no idea what caused the timer issue that started affecting several of its data centre nodes on Australia’s east coast at about 4.30am.
Telstra had identified “a software defect” and had isolated it. He apologised for the disruption.
“We let customers down today in their hour of need. There’s nothing that makes that untrue for many of those customers who are in traumatic situations, and we apologise for that deeply,” Ackland said.
Thousands of Telstra customers reported issues on Downdetector, a user-reported outage survey website, early on Wednesday. It peaked at about 7500 reports at 6.30am.
About 90 per cent of the network was back up and running by mid-morning, but it had not been fully restored by late afternoon. Telstra’s crisis management team met throughout the day.
The incident has thrown the spotlight back onto Australia’s Triple Zero system, which has been under intense scrutiny since a 14-hour Optus outage in late 2025 that was ultimately linked to two deaths.
Ackland said there were hundreds of Telstra customers who could not connect to Triple Zero.
“We’ve completed 333 welfare checks. Now, the way that we did that is we first sent an SMS to customers, 138 of those told us they didn’t need assistance at that point. We then called the remaining 189 by voice calls to get in contact with them, and 110 of those customers informed us they did not need assistance. There are 79 people we could not get in contact with,” he said.
“Six customers out of over 300 customers told us they needed assistance … they were referred to the emergency services.”
Emergency services confirmed there were calls that did not connect.
NSW Police Force said it had been asked by Telstra to carry out welfare checks on several people who tried to contact Triple Zero. “Police are actively conducting those welfare checks,” a spokeswoman said.
Western Australia Police Force carried out one welfare check in the Perth suburb of Bull Creek, a spokeswoman said, but found the call was “made in error”.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the outage was “deeply concerning” and raised questions for Telstra. “People are entitled to get answers, but they also want answers that are accurate. And those investigations are ongoing.”
Communications Minister Anika Wells returned from annual leave on Wednesday and was heavily critical of both Telstra and the sector’s efforts to rebuild confidence in the Triple Zero network.
“There are about three dozen welfare checks that are still ongoing,” she said. “I’d say that telcos are the least trusted industry in our country as we stand today, and days like today demonstrate exactly why Australians feel that way.”
Late last year, Wells increased penalties to $30 million for telcos that failed to follow Triple Zero rules.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority said it had opened an investigation into whether Telstra had followed its obligations, and the newly appointed Triple Zero custodian, Clare Chapple, has also been in regular contact with the telco.
“Both of those are already in a preliminary investigation stage, and everything we are doing is being tracked in order to get to the bottom of it and [to see] that justice is served,” Wells said. “All Australians would expect that justice.”
Liberal senator Sarah Henderson told Sky News Australia she had a couple of failed Triple Zero calls on Wednesday morning when testing to see if it worked, prompting swift criticism from the government.
Emergency Management Minister Kristy McBain described Henderson’s actions as “absolutely outrageous”. Calling Triple Zero for any other reason than an emergency is a federal crime.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young called for an immediate Senate inquiry into the outage, which she blamed on corporate greed. “For too long, Telstra and the other telcos have put their profits ahead of their customers’ safety and both the government and regulator, ACMA, have failed to hold them to account,” she said.
Transport delays
Wednesday’s outage appeared to be isolated to Telstra’s core network, which is also licensed to other brands known as mobile virtual network operators – such as Aldi Mobile and Belong. They were also down.
The outage wreaked havoc on public transport across the country. V/Line train services in Victoria could not run because the outage affected the entire network. Trains from Melbourne to Ballarat, Bendigo, Geelong, Gippsland and Seymour were cancelled on Wednesday morning.
“There is no estimated time for rectification at this stage. Passengers are advised to defer travel where possible,” said the V/Line website.
There were also significant delays on the NSW train network. Transport for NSW said routes between Sydney and Brisbane, Armidale, Casino and Grafton were affected.
Trains were also disrupted between Newcastle and Maitland on the Hunter line, and between Campbelltown and Moss Vale/Goulburn in regional NSW. Transport for NSW said it was organising replacement buses.
Payment system Tyro told customers on Wednesday morning that it was aware of the outage, which could prevent its terminals from processing EFTPOS transactions.
Source: https://www.afr.com/companies/telecommunications/trains-halted-as-telstra-mobile-outage-sweeps-nation-20260708-p60dik