South Australian Police have confirmed an elderly woman’s death was not caused by the Telstra outage after a Liberal senator linked the two on social media.
Police said the woman’s partner called his neighbour, who is a nurse, with his Telstra phone after finding her unresponsive about 10am on Wednesday.
Senator Kerrynne Liddle insisted that the report to her office was correct. Alex Ellinghausen
The nurse assessed the woman and used her Telstra phone to call Triple Zero.
In both instances, the Telstra devices successfully connected without any issue.
Paramedics took the woman to hospital, where she died hours later.
Police said the woman’s partner had difficulties contacting relatives once he was at the hospital and said that was misinterpreted and formed the belief the woman’s death was connected to the outage.
“It is unfortunate their loved one’s death was placed in the public arena in the manner it was when it need not have been,” police said in a statement.
Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland earlier said the company found no records of failed emergency calls from the woman’s address.
The scare comes after Liberal SA Senator Kerrynne Liddle shared that her office had received a report that the woman died after being unable to call Triple Zero during the outage.
“No Australian should ever be unable to connect to Triple Zero when their life depends on it,” she said on social media.
Police responded to the post, saying they had not been made aware of any death as a result of the outage before investigating the claim.
Liddle doubled down amid criticism of suggesting the woman died as a result of the Telstra outage and failing to contact police directly, instead advising the family to do so themselves.
“Amid much public interest I prioritised the privacy of the family during this time,” she said.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said she was relieved to learn the woman’s death was not linked to the outage but criticised Liddle for failing to contact police herself when she received the report.
“I am staggered that it took the SA Police going to door-knock the SA senator to exert her to provide the information that she had so that we could get to the bottom of this,” she told reporters on Friday.
“I am relieved that the outcome here is that there is no causative link between the outage and what is a tragic loss for the family.”
Telstra initially said a small number of Triple Zero calls from Telstra phones had been met with error messages, before escalating that estimate to over 600 as more information became available.
Wells confirmed welfare checks have been conducted on all the 600 failed triple zero calls, with seven people needing assistance and no negative outcomes.
“I’m sure that is of a huge relief to Australians,” she said.
Telstra CEO Vicki Brady faces the media after returning from leave. Louise Kennerley
Telstra CEO returns from leave to apologise
Telstra’s chief executive Vicki Brady returned from annual leave overseas on Friday to apologise for Wednesday’s outage and Thursday’s lingering issues, saying she is “deeply sorry” for the nationwide failure.
She said Telstra takes the public’s trust in Triple Zero “extremely seriously”.
“We have let our customers and Australians down. And, for that, I am deeply sorry,” she said.
“I understand how much Australians rely on us to keep in touch, to work, and stay safe.
“I also understand the broader impact on the community when services go down, from things like payments to transport.
“It’s extremely frustrating and disruptive when services aren’t available, and I am sorry for the impact that this has had on so many people.”
The outage left thousands of customers with intermittent to zero coverage and shut down public transport, Triple Zero calls in some parts of the country and payment services for small businesses.
With Brady on annual leave, her financial officer was left to step up to the media.
Telstra may face $30 million fine as investigations start
Wells said it is now time for Telstra to answer questions as the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) begins its investigation to the outage.
“I did not want or expect to be dealing with another mass outage so soon after the Optus incident,” she said.
“The last few days have been really difficult for many Australians and now that Telstra has resolved its outage, it is time for Telstra to face the music.”
ACMA deputy chair Adam Suckling warned Telstra would be held to account, adding that new powers would allow them to hand down a $30 million fine in the event of any wrongdoing.
“We are investigating into whether Telstra has complied with its legal and regulatory obligations under the law, including a range of new measures that the government introduced to beef up the Triple Zero system,” he said.
Telstra CFO Michael Ackland said the telco did not have records relating to the death in South Australia. Simon Schluter
Issue identified that caused outage, but human error being investigated
A timekeeping problem affecting a number of Telstra data centres in Sydney and Melbourne took the mobile network intermittently offline on Wednesday, while a secondary issue discovered that night continued to affect Triple Zero calls on Thursday.
Telstra said the issue was resolved on Thursday afternoon, but gave formal notice to the Triple Zero Custodian on Friday.
Brady did not rule out human error as being a part of the cause of the outage and said it is forming part of the investigation.
“We know this particular node did restart as work was happening on it, and as it restarted, this software glitch was triggered,” she said.
Brady said the restart was not unusual in a network the size of Telstra’s.