Telstra Outage Sparks Calls for Stricter Telecom Regulation in Australia

Experts and advocates have demanded changes to how telecommunication companies are regulated and held accountable for outages after Telstra became the latest telco to suffer a large-scale network failure.

Telecommunications industry expert and RMIT University associate professor Mark Gregory said recent high-profile outages proved Australia's "fragile" telco networks were not up to the job of always providing reliable phone and internet services.

Dr Gregory said national outages should not happen and questioned whether Telstra had done enough to ensure its network was resilient.

"An outage that takes down a national network is something that should not occur in this day and age," he said.

"We should have resiliency and reliability. There should be redundancy in the core network and what's difficult is finding information about what's actually happening."

Yesterday morning's Telstra outage caused commuter chaos, with multiple train services ground to a halt, and businesses ranging from taxi drivers to cafes unable to process digital payments.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said some Triple Zero (000) calls did not connect, while Telstra said it had conducted more than 330 welfare checks where the call had failed in some way.

Six people told Telstra they needed emergency assistance and more than 79 customers did not pick up and were referred to police.

Late yesterday, Telstra said some calls connected when they were diverted to the Optus or TPG networks, in a process known as camping-on, but others did not.

It comes less than a year since an Optus network failure went for almost 14 hours, leaving hundreds of people unable to call Triple Zero, which was linked to two deaths.

That followed another Optus outage in 2023 that impacted millions of people and health, education, and transport services.

Carol Bennett, CEO of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, the consumer group for the telco sector, said she was "dismayed" to see another widespread outage.

"Every telco outage carries a cost to the public in terms of their safety, to business operations, to people's connectivity to their family and friends, and the economy takes a huge hit," she said.

She said Telstra should receive a very significant penalty, "particularly when they're the custodians of Australian safety".

Advocates have long criticised regulation of the telecommunications sector, saying an over-reliance on industry self-governance has led to lax standards, something the sector has disputed.

However, the regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), recently rejected an industry code for consumer protection, finding it failed to provide adequate protections and stronger enforceable standards were needed.

Ms Bennett said the Albanese government should investigate whether more was needed to ensure systems were resilient by setting clear standards, such as those being used effectively in the energy sector.

"We want to see mobile reliability standards put in place to ensure that the telcos are held accountable for these outages and are proactive in addressing the issues that cause them," she said.

An investigation into last year's Optus outage commissioned by the company found it had to overhaul its network operations after they "clearly failed".

A key improvement was "strengthening the resilience and reliability of the network", which included shifting money spent on sales and marketing back to network investment.

A lengthy Senate inquiry, due to report next month, has also been examining whether the current system is failing consumers.

What started as a probe into last year's Optus failings has expanded to examine broader questions such as whether federal government oversight is fit for purpose.

The chair of that inquiry, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, said Telstra would be called to give evidence and accused the company of putting profits ahead of customer safety.

She also said the Greens would push in parliament for stronger reliability standards.

"There is currently no legal requirement for Telstra, or any other telecommunications supplier, to provide a reliable mobile phone system," she said.

Telstra has denied that recent job cuts were a factor in the outage.

'Better outage information from home smart battery than a telco'

The government has sought to make changes in recent times, including telcos having to report their outages on a register.

That is meant to provide clear information for "major" and "significant" local outages, including when it started, when services were restored, what areas were affected, the number of services impacted and the cause of the outage.

A "major" outage is defined as one that is unplanned and affects 100,000 or more services, all carriage services in a state or territory and is longer than 60 minutes.

Under the rules, telcos are required to communicate information to the public, including sending updates to customers every six hours in the first 24 hours, putting up-to-date information on their website and continuing to update customers by apps, email, SMS, social or other media.

Telstra confirmed to the ABC that it was a major outage and it "notified relevant stakeholders as required".

The Telstra website published an outage alert on Wednesday morning which stated, "some customers may experience issues with their mobile service".

The company said it also provided updates on the Telstra App, social media platforms, its blog and at two press conferences.

Ms Bennett said she did not think the outage register had helped Telstra customers.

Dr Gregory said he believed telcos should be required to do more.

"The minister needs to change the regulations to require telcos to provide a full report that's published publicly on all major and significant outages."

Graeme Hughes, a business, retail and consumer expert from Griffith University, said too much of daily commerce, transport, and logistics relied on a single mobile network.

The telco regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, has opened an investigation into whether Telstra "complied with its regulatory obligations", including for emergency calls and outages.

Ms Wells said once people had their services restored and welfare checks were done, Telstra would be probed and "need to account for how and why this outage occurred".

The ABC sent questions to Telstra about whether it had met its outage obligations but did not receive a response before publication.

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Telstra's chief financial officer Michael Ackland defended its record at a press conference.

"We take these outages very, very seriously. Our investment and resilience and cybersecurity and redundancy in our network is significant, but it is a big and complex network. From time to time, issues do occur."

He was asked again about this at a second press conference on Tuesday evening where he said Telstra had failed the public but should still be trusted.

In a statement, Telstra said its network was built "with multiple layers of resilience, including redundant core network systems, geographic diversity across key network elements, backup power systems, diverse routing and 24/7 operational monitoring".

"Our network is designed to minimise the risk of single points of failure and to restore services as quickly as possible when disruptions occur."