{"id":787919,"date":"2026-07-08T22:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T22:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/787919\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T22:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T22:54:13","slug":"the-winter-of-our-disconnect-how-telstras-outage-wrought-havoc-across-a-continent-telstra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/787919\/","title":{"rendered":"The winter of our disconnect: how Telstra\u2019s outage wrought havoc across a continent | Telstra"},"content":{"rendered":"

The first signs something was wrong with Australia\u2019s largest mobile network began just after 4am, as people rolled out of bed to begin their day only to find they couldn\u2019t make or receive phone calls or access mobile internet.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNo Telstra<\/a> mobile service for past half hour,\u201d one person from Victoria\u2019s Point Cook wrote on Down Detector, which had reports slowly trickle in from 4am and then ratchet up to 7,000 in the hour from 5.30am.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo mobile service,\u201d someone else wrote from Sydney\u2019s inner west.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan\u2019t call 000,\u201d one person wrote.<\/p>\n

Telstra, which powers about 25m mobile services nationwide, plunged into a nationwide outage for most of Wednesday morning, an event the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, labelled \u201cdeeply concerning\u201d and \u201cdisruptive\u201d.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the approximately six-hour outage, it became apparent just how much Australians rely on Telstra.<\/p>\n

Some Eftpos machines couldn\u2019t process payments, leaving customers in the lurch.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently at Hungry Jacks Wollongong to figure out what the heck is going on. When is this gonna be normal?\u201d one posted on Down Detector.<\/p>\n

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One person in Adelaide told Guardian Australia she runs a business online and had no interactions on her website while the network was down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is very frustrating. Truly at the mercy of the cyber world hey?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Fears turned to whether there could be a repeat of the 2025 Optus outage<\/a>, in which 600 households in South Australia, Western Australia<\/a> and the Northern Territory faced at least a 10-hour outage. Three people died<\/a> during the botched upgrade, including an eight-week-old baby.<\/p>\n

Some state police services confirmed that triple-zero calls, which operate on a different network, hadn\u2019t been affected in the outage, but others warned Telstra customers could experience issues.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday evening, Telstra\u2019s chief financial officer, Michael Ackland, said the telco had conducted 333 welfare calls in response to calls to triple zero that failed in some way to connect.<\/p>\n

Of those, six people said they still needed assistance and were connected with emergency services, while police conducted physical welfare checks on 79 people Telstra was unable to reach.<\/p>\n

Just as train networks were about to hit peak hour on Wednesday morning, the regional train network in Victoria ground to a halt. Two regional train lines in New South Wales also went down.<\/p>\n

\u201cServices are currently unable to operate due to the national Telstra outage affecting the network,\u201d Victoria\u2019s V\/Line confirmed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no estimated time for rectification at this stage. Passengers are advised to defer travel where possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was an ironic turn for 62-year-old Luke, who had planned to travel on the V\/Line on Wednesday morning from Castlemaine to Bendigo for an appointment with Telstra unrelated to the outage, and was unable to travel to the appointment because of its network failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t drive, and a taxi is not financially viable,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"WelfareWelfare checks in progress after major Telstra outage hits mobiles and triple-zero calls \u2013 video<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t only the trains. Adnan Choudhury\u2019s wife and children were returning from visiting family in Gladstone on Wednesday morning to Brisbane in his electric car when his wife realised she couldn\u2019t access maps.<\/p>\n

When she attempted to charge the car at the EV station in Bundaberg, she couldn\u2019t use the app on her phone to make payments in the EV charger station, and the station itself was not online.<\/p>\n

Choudhury said some stations automatically provide free charging in such a scenario but neither of the two stations his wife visited were working while the outage was ongoing.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe basically had to wait at a McDonald\u2019s until the network was restored, at which point she could finally charge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Choudhury said he remains a supporter of EVs, and lays blame for the problem directly with Telstra.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t carry cash. If I got to a petrol station and their Eftpos services weren\u2019t working, I would be just as screwed because I couldn\u2019t pay for petrol,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not my car\u2019s fault that Telstra can\u2019t do its job.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Deeply sorry\u2019<\/p>\n

Ackland, who has been Telstra\u2019s acting chief executive while Vicki Brady is on leave, held a press conference at 10am, by which point 90% of services had been restored. At another press conference just after 5pm, he said that was now 100%.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still conducting our investigation into the root cause, but we are confident we have identified a software defect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are deeply sorry for the impact that this has had today on so many people.\u201d<\/p>\n

At his 10am press conference, Ackland warned customers not to test and \u201ctry out triple zero unless you need to\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the afternoon, the shadow communications minister, Sarah Henderson, told ABC\u2019s Afternoon Briefing she had called triple-zero as a test \u2013 an act which is against the law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She defended the action and said it wasn\u2019t against the law, arguing \u201cthe bottom line is that I\u2019m doing my job, and I don\u2019t have trust in this government\u201d.<\/p>\n

The communications minister, Anika Wells, cut a holiday short to respond to the outage. She said it was the responsibility of the telcos to improve their systems to \u201cmake sure that Australians can rely upon them when they need them most\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some improvements to the system. This is different [in] nature [to] the Optus outage in September,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Wells also snapped at claims made by One Nation\u2019s Barnaby Joyce, who suggested foreign interference could be a factor in the Telstra outage, calling it \u201cirresponsible\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ackland, who confirmed the outage was not caused by a \u201ccyber incident\u201d, said others had also found an opportunity to exploit the chaos.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have seen reports of customers receiving calls from fraudsters trying to take advantage of this moment, and our advice to our customers is, if you get a call from someone claiming to be Telstra asking you for details in light of today\u2019s outage, please hang up and call us back directly now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Fallout continues<\/p>\n

For some, the chaos is still not over.<\/p>\n

While public transport in Western Australia and South Australia was unaffected, passengers taking regional trains in Victoria and New South Wales were not as lucky.<\/p>\n

Peak-hour commuters queue at Southern Cross station in Melbourne after delays to V\/Line services. Photograph: Donna Lu\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

In NSW, regional rail passengers were warned to prepare for continued disruptions to services on Thursday morning, with metro services unaffected.<\/p>\n

The state\u2019s transport department on Wednesday evening said passengers on regional Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink regional rail services should \u201cexpect flow-on impacts\u201d and to \u201cplan ahead and check the latest service information before commencing their journey due to ongoing disruptions affecting rail operations\u201d.<\/p>\n

Victoria\u2019s V\/line train services were disrupted throughout Wednesday with the regional train line warning they would also affect Thursday morning\u2019s peak services.<\/p>\n

Meg Wilson was one of hundreds queuing for a replacement bus to Ballarat on Wednesday evening. She lives in Mount Gambier, about five hours from Melbourne.<\/p>\n

She had been in the queue for about 30 minutes when an announcement advised passengers to \u201cmake their own way home\u201d as there would be a \u201ctwo- to three-hour delay\u201d in more coaches. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s impossible \u2013 it is not going to happen,\u201d she told Guardian Australia. \u201cI have no family anywhere closer to come and get me. There are no rental car places that are open; there\u2019s no other way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson had caught a coach from Ballarat early on Wednesday into Melbourne.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey expected in Ballarat that [the outage issue] was going to be cleared up this afternoon. I should have stayed home.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a statement on Wednesday evening, a V\/Line spokesperson advised passengers \u201cnot to travel on V\/Line services [on Thursday] if possible\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe V\/Line network continues to be impacted following the nationwide Telstra telecommunications outage, with passenger train services unable to operate,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

A \u201cvery limited coach service\u201d would operate during Thursday morning\u2019s peak hours, they said, thanking passengers \u201cfor their patience as work continues to safely restore services\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first signs something was wrong with Australia\u2019s largest mobile network began just after 4am, as people rolled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":787920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-787919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=787919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/787920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=787919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=787919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=787919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}