{"id":619,"date":"2026-07-08T10:06:48","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T10:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=619"},"modified":"2026-07-08T10:06:48","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T10:06:48","slug":"telstra-outage-trains-and-emergency-calls-in-australia-affected-by-telecoms-outage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=619","title":{"rendered":"Telstra outage: Trains and emergency calls in Australia affected by telecoms outage"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/ace\/branded_news\/1200\/cpsprodpb\/f43d\/live\/8e1bb6a0-7a96-11f1-932b-1f29e7985956.jpg\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Telstra outage: Trains and emergency calls in Australia affected by telecoms outage\" title=\"Telstra outage: Trains and emergency calls in Australia affected by telecoms outage\" \/><\/div><p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">A major outage at Australia&#8217;s largest telecommunications company has led to cancelled train services, left thousands of customers without mobile coverage, and sparked an investigation into emergency calls that were not connected.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Telstra&#8217;s chief financial officer Michael Ackland apologised for the issue which began at 04:30 local time on Wednesday and affected &#8220;some mobile calls and data services&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Services were fully restored about 12 hours later, he said. A software defects related to time-keeping servers at data centres in Sydney and Melbourne was to blame &#8211; not a cyber attack, Ackland added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Australia&#8217;s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the outage was &#8220;deeply concerning&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Telstra described the outage as &#8220;intermittent&#8221; but acknowledged the impact had been &#8220;national&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ackland said the telecoms company had conducted welfare checks on customers who had called emergency services during the outage, with six requiring immediate help.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Back-up systems, which divert emergency calls through other mobile carriers, largely worked as they should, he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Asked if the country could still rely on its largest mobile network, Ackland said: &#8220;Australia can absolutely have faith in its biggest telco&#8230; we take these outages very very seriously.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Our investment in resilience and cyber security and redundancy in our network is significant but it is a big and complex network and from time to time, issues do occur.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">confirmed that welfare checks were being made for about three dozen calls to emergency services that did not go through but that the &#8220;core triple-zero system remains operational&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Communications Minister Anika Wells said the country&#8217;s telco regulator, the Australian Communication and Media Authority, will investigate the outage. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In Victoria, all regional train services were cancelled due to the outage while some regional services in New South Wales were also disrupted. National freight services were also affected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Payment systems were also down with about 80,000 businesses using the Tyro app affected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Last September, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c98ddzrgjnyo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">systems outage at Optus<\/a> &#8211; the second largest telecoms company in Australia &#8211; led to three deaths after hundreds of people across more than half the country were unable to call emergency services for 13 hours. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Optus was also fined after an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-australia-67340901\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">outage in 2023<\/a> left thousands unable to call emergency services.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A major outage at Australia&#8217;s largest telecommunications company has led to cancelled train services, left thousands of customers without mobile coverage, and sparked an investigation into emergency calls that were not connected. Telstra&#8217;s chief financial officer Michael Ackland apologised for the issue which began at 04:30 local time on Wednesday and affected &#8220;some mobile calls&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/ace\/branded_news\/1200\/cpsprodpb\/f43d\/live\/8e1bb6a0-7a96-11f1-932b-1f29e7985956.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[1330,871,310,1329,1327,1331,1326,1328],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news","tag-affected","tag-australia","tag-calls","tag-emergency","tag-outage","tag-telecoms","tag-telstra","tag-trains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}