Telstra Outage Disrupts Services Across Australia, Impacting Transport and Businesses

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New South Wales

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Australian Capital Territory

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Northern Territory

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Queensland

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South Australia

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Tasmania

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Victoria

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Western Australia

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Long wait for replacement buses in regional NSW

D By Dannielle Maguire

Services on the Hunter Line between Newcastle Interchange and Maitland have been cancelled.

Replacement buses were being arranged by Transport for NSW, however staff at Newcastle Interchange were telling some passengers that there would be a lengthy wait for those buses to arrive.

Commuter Wayne caught a train earlier this morning from Telarah, near Maitland, to Newcastle to attend a gym session this morning and was waiting for a replacement bus to arrive to take him home.

"By the time I got to the gym I wasn't able to use the gym app that I normally use, but [when I] finished and came to the train station there were no trains on the Hunter Line.

"I do have [reception] at the moment, but not everyone has it."

He said it has disrupted his day a little bit, but as a retiree, it was mainly just an inconvenience.

"I've got some stuff to do later this afternoon, but it hasn't really impacted me that greatly, but I can understand it's probably affected a lot of people."

ABC Newcastle Editor Lucia Hill was on a train between Maitland and Newcastle when the outage began.

The train she was on halted near Tarro station, with passengers able to eventually get off and make other travel arrangements if they were unable to wait for a bus.

Transport for NSW says it's unclear how long the Hunter Line will be impacted.

Queensland Police says its Triple Zero service is 'fully operational'

D By Dannielle Maguire

We've heard from another state police service about how the outage is impacting emergency calls.

Here's what Queensland Police says:

"The Queensland Police Service is aware of a service interruption impacting some Telstra users across Australia.

"The Queensland triple zero service remains fully operational.

"Impacted customers should check with their provider about what the outage means for them."

Why was the CFO addressing the media?

G By Georgie Hewson

Why the CFO and not the CEO fronting the media?

- Kev

Hi Kev, thanks for your question.

During the press conference Michael Ackland said he was adressing the media as the CEO was on annual leave and he had been acting as her delegate for that period.

Telstra's CEO is Vicky Brady.

Telstra CFO apologises for disruption

D By Dannielle Maguire

Just taking you back to Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland's presser an hour ago.

To recap what he said, there's still no word on the root cause of the outage, however, there's no evidence of malicious activity.

Ackland said the company was investigating reports of Triple Zero calls being impacted, but emergency calls should not have been impacted in the same way as regular calls.

"We know that customers across the whole community rely on our connectivity, and this network challenge has caused many issues.

"It's been a big disruption to many people's days, and we apologise for that.

"Our teams are working, right now, as quickly as possible to get things back online.

"We will share updates with you as we have them."

ICYMI 📹: Telstra CEO Michael Ackland speaks about nationwide outage

G By Georgie Hewson

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Taxi drivers forced to give away free rides

G By Georgie Hewson

Anurag Sharma is a taxi driver in Ballarat, in regional Victoria, and is lost this morning because no trains are running, his network is with Telstra and he can't use the system to charge passengers.

"Since around 8am this morning, there's lots of people running around struggling," Mr Sharma said.

"Our [taxi] network is with Telstra, so we can't do anything, I've dropped a few people off and they can't pay me.

"So I say don't worry about the money, I'll just drop you off. It doesn't matter, it's all good."

Thousands of businesses likely affected by Telstra outage

M By Michael Black

Some of the roughly 80,000 businesses that use the Telstra network at point-of-sale could be taking a hit to revenue this morning.

Tyro EFTPOS machines use the Telstra mobile network, if Wi-Fi or ethernet is unavailable.

Graham Hughes from Griffith University's business school says the more interconnected businesses and services are, the harder these outages hit.

"About 80,000 businesses use Tyro, so some of those customers will obviously be impacted, and that's very difficult," he told ABC NewsRadio.

"We make substantially more digital payments than ever before, so grappling to pay for your simple coffee order or pay for your taxi might not be possible.

"It's very hard for businesses to recoup some of those losses."

Trains between Sydney and Canberra halted

R By Robert Baird

Transport for NSW's acting coordinator-general Matt Longland spoke to 666 ABC Canberra this morning.

He said a Canberra-bound service was brought to a stop just outside Sydney earlier this morning after it lost communications with the control centre.

The Sydney-bound service was also suspended mid-journey.

He said today's timetables will be adjusted when communications are restored, but travellers should expect extensive delays.

Outage 'big inconvenience' for regional businesses

T By Toby Hemmings

In Cooma in the NSW Snowy Mountains, Marion Mason has been unable to call her clients for a construction cleaning job:

"We've just driven two and a half hours up here to go to work,"

"It’s been a pretty big inconvenience."

Tourists visiting the region for the school holidays are also navigating the connection loss.

"I actually didn't know there was an outage, until my wife rang me on my son's phone who is with Optus," said one holiday-maker passing through the town.

"Just by pure chance we diversified."

Sydney train services not impacted by outage

D By Dannielle Maguire

We know there have been issues for commuters on the Hunter Line in New South Wales this morning.

But it sounds as if Sydneysider commuters aren't being affected.

Here's a statement from Transport for NSW:

"We are aware of a broader Telstra network issue affecting some mobile phone services.

"At this stage, there are no known impacts to Sydney Metropolitan services or Opal systems.

"We are monitoring impacts to regional rail services, with some NSW TrainLink services, including the Melbourne XPT, experiencing delays due to telecommunications-related issues.

"Customer communications may also be affected while the outage continues.

"We will provide further updates as more information becomes available."

Telstra making welfare checks on potential Triple Zero failures

D By Dannielle Maguire

Telstra's CFO Michael Ackland was asked if there had been any fatalities from people who were unable to call Triple Zero.

"We have made welfare checks.

"I don't have any information to share on that at this stage."

He was then asked if there were calls that couldn't get through or if that meant the company was unable to tell.

"...We can monitor all calls that are attempted and failing.

"And we have been conducting welfare checks on those.

"We don't believe this issue has impacted Triple Zero in the same way as other calls.

"It uses different network settings.

"But we are continuing to investigate every angle on where it may have impacted Triple Zero, if that has occurred."

'Can Australia have faith in its biggest national telco?'

G By Georgie Hewson

Michael Ackland is asked if Australia can still have faith in Telstra as a result of the outage.

"I believe Australia can absolutely have faith in its biggest telco and that is Telstra," he says.

"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."

When will the Telstra outage be fixed?

D By Dannielle Maguire

No firm answer on that from Telstra's CFO.

"I do not have a response on how long it will take to rectify.

"As we have restored those nodes, they will then update through the servers, and it could take some time before we're not seeing any intermittent responses.

"But it should become less as we restore the nodes."

Telstra CFO does not know exact number of customers affected

G By Georgie Hewson

Michael Ackland is asked when the last time was that Telstra had a national outage of this scale.

He says he doesn't have an answer to that.

"I think this is one is a set of intermittent outages," he says.

"If you go back to 2016, where there were more significant outages, I don't think it is of that scale."

He is asked how many customers have been affected.

"I don't know, thousands," he says.

"It could be tens of thousands, but I think it's more likely in the thousands."

He is asked if Telstra will consider compensation for customers.

"Our focus at the moment is absolutely on getting things up and running," he says.

"We will deal with our customers post the event, as we will work with government and regulators on any other actions that need to be taken."

Outage is 'national' and 'intermittent'

D By Dannielle Maguire

Telstra CFO Michael Ackland is asked about the scale of the outage.

"It has been intermittent.

"But it has been national.

"So, it doesn't matter where you're located — it is not around a particular state, it's not about regional or metro."

'We don't yet know what the root cause is': Telstra CFO

G By Georgie Hewson

Michael Ackland is taking questions now and is asked to clarify if the issue stemmed from a server box in a data centre.

"It will be in a data centre," he says.

"We know where the issue is.

"The teams are moving to restore them, we don't yet know what the root cause was."

Telstra says no evidence of malicious activity

D By Dannielle Maguire

Telstra CFO Michael Ackland was asked if there was any suspicion of malicious activity being behind the outage.

Here's what he said:

"At this stage, we have nothing to indicate malicious activity.

"We've been in contact with all regulators and government agencies to that effect.

"We continue to investigate.

"We continue to remain curious and explore every avenue.

"But we have nothing on that."

Triple Zero calls not impacted in the same way, says CFO

G By Georgie Hewson

Michael Ackland says Triple Zero calls follow different settings in the network and were not impacted in the same way.

"We have seen a small number of reports that we are investigating and, as part of our standard process, which has been operating through the night and through this morning, we conduct welfare checks when any call to Triple Zero fails and we've been doing this," he says.

"We do ask customers not to test and try out Triple Zero unless you need Triple Zero.

"We don't yet know the root cause. We are investigating that urgently."

Telstra's CFO is speaking now

D By Dannielle Maguire

Telstra's chief financial officer Michael Ackland is speaking now.

He says customers should try again to make calls.

"Customers who are having trouble making a call, I encourage you to try again.

"Depending on how the call is routed through the network, it may connect successfully on another attempt.

"People are seeing that occur.

"If you're at home or in the office, and you have access to wi-fi, we encourage you to use that.

"If you are connected to wi-fi, services such as WhatsApp messaging or Teams or Facebook or FaceTime should continue, and will continue to work as normal."