A nationwide Telstra outage that began at 04:30 local time on Wednesday and lasted about 12 hours was caused by software defects in time-keeping servers at data centres in Sydney and Melbourne, Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland said. The fault left thousands of customers without mobile coverage, cancelled all regional train services in Victoria and disrupted some regional services in New South Wales, and affected national freight movements. Back-up systems that divert emergency calls through other carriers largely worked, but roughly three dozen calls to triple-zero did not connect and Telstra carried out welfare checks, finding six callers required immediate help. About 80,000 businesses using the Tyro payments app experienced outages. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the outage deeply concerning and Communications Minister Anika Wells said the Australian Communications and Media Authority will investigate. Ackland said the issue was not a cyber attack and apologised, noting Telstra will treat the incident seriously amid scrutiny after a fatal Optus outage last September and subsequent regulatory penalties for that company.
