Updated ,first published
Telstra was urgently investigating a second network outage on Wednesday night that was preventing some phones from connecting, including the Triple Zero, hours after the telco said it had fixed it outages and disabled its telephone services for long periods of the day.
In a statement issued about 9.30pm AEST on Wednesday, Telstra said that while it had fixed the fault behind the midday outage, it had discovered a “second issue” affecting some phones, including the Triple Zero.
People calling Triple Zero may hear an error message when their phone tries to connect to another mobile network, the company said. It urged anyone who couldn’t get past waiting up to 90 seconds for their phone to switch networks. If that fails, Telstra asked customers to try calling from a different phone.
Telstra said it will conduct a welfare check whenever it detects a failed Three Zero call. “We are working quickly to resolve this issue,” the statement said. As of 7am on Thursday, Telstra said around 90 per cent of Triple Zero calls that had been affected by the issue were now being answered.
The new offenses covered a a chaotic day for the country’s largest telecommunications company. A nationwide outage that began early Wednesday morning caused more than 300 Triple Zero phones to fail, according to Telstra, with six people telling the company they needed help after the company and police conducted welfare checks on 300.
One woman, identified as Lynne, told the ABC her 95-year-old mother fell at her home in NSW’s Hunter region and was unable to use her personal alarm to call for help because it was out.
“She was pressing … her alarm to get help and without Telstra or another service provider hitting the emergency, it could have been life and death for her,” said Lynne, who eventually found her mother distraught but unharmed. This cluster head has not independently verified the account.
Two sources inside Telstra linked the daytime glitch to a software issue that set network timing systems back nearly 20 years, to 2006. Modern phone networks rely on accurate timing to verify equipment, and the incorrect date caused parts of the network to reject customer calls.
Telstra’s chief financial officer, Michael Ackland, confirmed a software bug had changed network timing and said the company was working through the details. He apologized for releasing customers “in their hour of need” and said the afternoon’s issues had been resolved by 4pm.
Ackland said more Triple Zero calls had failed than the company first expected, after some calls did not switch to Optus or TPG for emergency calls.
Liberal Senator Kerrynne Liddle said her office received a report of a death following a failure to reach Triple Zero during the outage. South Australian police said they were not aware of any deaths in the state as a result of the car crash.
“The Senator’s office received a report this morning about the distress caused in connection with the outage,” a spokesperson said when asked for more details. “The family have been advised to contact SAPOL when they are ready to talk about their experiences.”
Early outage it brought down Victoria’s entire passenger rail networkdelayed some NSW trains, and crashed charging stations, electric vehicle chargers and small service providers that use the Telstra network, including Boost, Belong and Aldi Mobile.
Communications Minister Anika Wells said Thursday morning that she should have been told earlier about the error. His office was notified around 7 am, despite it starting around 3 am.
“I would have liked to have heard earlier,” the Labor leader, who yesterday returned early from holiday, told the ABC radio programme. A.M. “There appears to have been some sort of delay.” He declined to call for immediate resignations at Telstra, saying investigations should take their course.
When asked about Liddle’s claims of death, Wells said: “It has not been reported to me that the failure to connect with Triple Zero contributed to the fatal outcome.”
Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady announced her return from overseas holiday on Friday. Ackland is expected to address the media again on Thursday.
Telstra was fined more than $3 million in 2024 over an earlier glitch that prevented some customers from accessing Triple Zero. The telecommunications company now faces potential penalties in the tens of millions of dollars for Wednesday’s issues.
Australian telecommunications have come under constant scrutiny over reliability since Optus’ double failure. The nationwide Optus outage in November 2023 knocked out more than 10 million services and left around 2,000 people unable to access Triple Zero, and the Optus outage in September last year, where hundreds were unable to access the emergency line, was linked to two deaths and powers to Guardian Zero Three and stricter laws are now being tried and failed on Wednesday.
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David Swan is the technology editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously the technology editor of The Australian newspaper.Connect through X or email address.
