Updated July 9, 2026 — 10:30am,first published July 9, 2026 — 7:03am
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Victoria’s regional rail operator is scrambling to get its trains back on track on Thursday afternoon after a second consecutive morning with services cancelled statewide because of the Telstra outage.
The outage began at 4.30am on Wednesday, and while Telstra had restored most phone call capabilities by later that morning, V/Line has been at a standstill for more than 24 hours with no estimated time for rectification.
Andrea Bowman from Wangaratta boards a bus to Seymour. Alexander Darling
V/Line chief executive Will Tieppo said on Thursday morning that it was too soon to say when trains would resume but hoped the network would be ready in time for the afternoon peak.
Tieppo explained the fault was caused by Telstra’s 4G network interfering with the back-up satellite phones used by each train. V/Line accesses the national train communications system managed by the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC), which said the issue affected the system nationwide.
“ARTC have undertaken 33 tests already on existing national trains and that’s proven to be successful. We’re now in the testing phase here in Melbourne to make sure that the radio systems are operating as safely as possible,” Tieppo said.
“We’re hoping after the testing gets done in the next couple of hours … we can make a decision and get clearance from ARTC and Telstra that the network is stable and safe to operate.
“We’re hoping to get afternoon peak up and running, and we’ll just wait and see.”
Andrea Bowman, of Wangaratta, was one of hundreds at the Southern Cross bus terminal on Thursday morning, having arrived in Melbourne a day earlier.
A round trip with her friend and their four teen boys that would normally cost $11 each has spiralled into $600 in accommodation and toiletry expenses.
“I’ll be driving my car to Melbourne from now on,” she said.
Bowman said she would have to miss a day of work in Wangaratta. She was among hundreds of people who tried to get home on Wednesday night, but quickly decided to book a hotel room once she saw the mass of angry travellers at the bus terminal.
Megan Felice, who was trying to return to Geelong from Melbourne with her two children at Southern Cross Station on Thursday morning.Joe Armao
“The staff have been quite helpful this morning, I can imagine they would’ve copped a lot of abuse last night,” she said.
The anger continued on Thursday morning, with some commuters visibly enraged after missing out on a spot on a bus to Waurn Ponds, a south-western suburb of Geelong. They will have to wait another hour for the next one.
Megan Felice, who is returning to Geelong from Melbourne with her two children after a school holiday shopping trip, was stuck at the front of the line after the 9.30am bus left.
“We got here early just to make sure we got a bus home,” she said.
Tieppo defended V/Line’s management of the outage, which left 1700 people at Southern Cross last night waiting for up to two hours for scarce replacement buses.
“A disruption of this scale has been unprecedented for us,” he said. “Organising a bus replacement program for a whole network that normally runs thousands of people a day normally takes months to plan.”
V/Line had 140 replacement buses on Wednesday. On Thursday, it has 100 replacement buses operating, with one bus running hourly on each route.
V/Line has since announced that customers who were delayed by at least 60 minutes can apply for compensation.
As the morning commute begins, regional Victorians are counting the cost in time and fuel.
Karen, who lives in Yarrawonga on the border with New South Wales, was travelling three hours to Melbourne on Thursday.
“It’s taken me over an hour to get to Benalla, because it’s really foggy and there are a bloody lot of potholes around,” she told 3AW. “It’s really stressful.”
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V/Line is a regional rail line but also serves some outer Melbourne suburbs, including the western growth areas such as Melton and Wyndham Vale.
City of Melton mayor Lara Carli said the outage illustrated the need to finally extend the Metro network by electrifying the Melton line.
“When a single outage can bring services to a standstill and leave commuters stranded on
platforms in the middle of winter with no other options to get to work, it highlights the urgent need for a more reliable and resilient public transport network,” she said.
An ARTC spokesperson said it was working with Telstra “around the clock” to restore the communications system.
“Recovery will take time, and services will resume in a controlled and phased manner as communications are confirmed and all operational safety checks are completed,” they said.
“Passenger services will remain paused until the network is fully operational.”
The Telstra outage was attributed to a software issue that sent the network’s timekeeping systems back almost 20 years, to 2006.
Modern mobile networks rely on precise timing to authenticate devices, and the incorrect date caused parts of the network to reject customers’ phones.
Frustrated passengers at Melbourne’s Southern Cross station on Wednesday after regional trains were cancelled due to the Telstra outage.Paul Rovere
The outage, which began early on Wednesday morning, also caused more than 300 Triple-Zero calls to fail. Six people told Telstra they needed help after the telco and police carried out about 300 welfare checks.
It also affected interstate train services, elevators at a major Victorian university and the pagers of emergency services.
Late on Wednesday night, Telstra confirmed it was urgently investigating a second network fault that was stopping some calls from connecting, including to Triple Zero, hours after the telco said it had resolved the first outage.
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David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.
Patrick Hatch is transport reporter at The Age and a former business reporter.Connect via X or email.From our partners