Millions of Telstra customers were left stranded after a disruption to the network occurred at 4.30am on July 8.
Triggered by maintenance work that caused the system’s clocks to go backwards by two decades, the telco has officially taken accountability, and an external investigation has now been undertaken.
Since the disruption, it has been ascertained that 604 Triple Zero calls were not transferred to another network as a backup after more than 25 million mobile devices were affected.
At their recent Senate meeting, the telco admitted the disaster (which not only prevented emergency services calls, but also affected public transport) could have been avoidable had they replaced the ageing server for $30,000.
Telstra Chief Executive, Vicki Brady, says she was sorry for the failure and apologised on behalf of the telco.
“Telstra let Australia down. We let our customers down, we let the community down, and we fell short of what people rightly expect from us,” she told the Senate.
“Triple zero sits at the heart of public trust in Australia’s communication system. Telstra has a critical role in the system and we take that responsibility extremely seriously.
“No one should be left wondering whether a call for emergency help will get through.”
It is believed the outage occurred after a design change to fix an earlier fault on the equipment had been made. The change had not been properly documented, and the maintenance team was not aware of how the device would behave when restarted.
The telco is now facing a potential fine of millions of dollars as well as millions of dollars’ worth of compensation claims.
8.8 million individuals and businesses were contacted in regard to the outage, but it has been confirmed that not everyone would be receiving compensation for the outage.
Ms Brady has confirmed that they have since made 604 welfare checks to those who were unable to contact Triple Zero, and says they are not aware of any life-threatening outcomes as a result of the outage.
“In these cases, callers received an error message and the phone may have attempted to connect to an alternative mobile network,” she says.
“This issue was linked to the same software configuration that caused the original outage, but required a separate fix.”
It has since come to light that Telstra was issued update warnings in both 2022 and in January 2026 by the manufacturer, both of which had been ignored.
Customers were only alerted of the outage at 7.14am via email, nearly three hours after the outage had started.
ACMA is still investigating the outage, and the telco could face a $30 million penalty for its failure, $16 million more than Optus was fined for their 2024 outage.
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