Telstra Outage Stops 300 Triple Zero Calls In Australia

A Telstra network outage in Australia disrupted mobile voice and data services and caused 300 failed calls to the triple-zero emergency number, adding another failure to the country’s troubled record of emergency communications incidents.

The outage also halted payment services for thousands of small businesses and disrupted Melbourne’s morning commuter rail service.

Telstra attributed the incident to a network time-keeping problem.

CFO Michael Ackland said a software fault caused a GPS node to reset, disrupting timing settings across the network, the Guardian reported.

Telstra did not disclose how many users were affected, but apologised for what it called an “intermittent” failure of voice and data services.

By late afternoon, 12 hours after the problem emerged, “just under 90% of calls and data services” had been restored, Telstra said.

National freight services and commuter services in Victoria and New South Wales were expected to take days to recover fully.

Network failure and service disruption

Telstra identified the problem at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday and initially said it was not aware of any issue affecting emergency calls.

Communications Minister Anika Wells later said the emergency-call system had been affected, based on advice from the Triple Zero Custodian.

Wells described the outage as widespread and causing “significant disruption.” After returning from a mid-year break, she said the incident showed why telecommunications was Australia’s “least trusted industry.”

The disruption spread beyond ordinary mobile users.

Payment services went offline for thousands of small businesses, while Melbourne’s morning commuter rail service was also taken down.

Freight and commuter operations in Victoria and New South Wales faced longer recovery periods.

Emergency calls and government response

The Triple Zero Custodian is a new function created after a fatal Optus system outage last year.

During the Telstra outage, an opposition politician admitted calling triple zero to “test it,” despite advice from Wells and the possibility of breaking the law.

The failed calls renewed scrutiny of Australia’s emergency communications system.

An Optus outage last September led to the deaths of three people.

Telstra was also criticised over the death of a user with a non-VoLTE phone, an incident the company failed to report for two months.

Optus’ entire network went down for half a day two years ago.

Telstra was fined 3 million Australian dollars, or US$2.1 million, for a triple-zero failure in March 2024.

A recurring Australian telecom problem

An OECD report earlier this year said Australia’s mobile market suffered from a lack of competition and urged the government to lower barriers to new entrants.

The market has three entrenched competitors serving one of the world’s most sparsely populated countries, with no shared network regime.

The repeated outages have exposed how a basic fault can spread through systems that lack sufficient redundancy or resilience.

The latest failure left emergency calls, payments, rail services and freight operations dependent on a network whose recovery was still incomplete by late afternoon.