Potentially over 25 million[1] people were sent into a signal blackout today when Australia’s largest telecommunications company Telstra underwent a nationwide network outage.
Other mobile phone plan providers who operate under Telstra’s network such as Boost, Aldi, Tangerine, Belong and Everyday Mobile[2] have also suffered from the outage. Telstra’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Michael Auckland reported in a press conference that he believed that only thousands of people were affected.[3]
With the first reports at around 4:30AM, reports of disturbances spiked at around 7AM.[4] Telstra released a statement at 10AM stating that around 90% of services were restored.[5] The telco has recommended users still affected to restart their phones instead of switching airplane mode on and off.
Telstra operates with multiple nodes and data centres across the country, which act like servers updating parts of the network. These nodes act to synchronise time across multiple computer systems as part of an authentication process. Auckland explained:
“Lots of computer systems, they have to synchronise time. It’s one of the ways that you authenticate what’s going on in the network and the time synchronisation in those nodes, wasn’t working as it should,”[6]
No root cause for the failure has been found yet.[7]
In the morning, any UNSW regional commuters would have been impacted as two train lines were disabled due to an ‘external communication issue’.Victorian regional passengers were affected too, the entire rural train systems being shut down.[8]
Payment system Tyro was also affected by the outage, causing disruptions for around 80,000 small businesses which utilise their EFTPOS systems. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has also reported[9] that merchant EFTPOS terminals were being impacted by the outage, recommending customers use another network provider or local WiFi. Notably, Opal systems were unaffected despite running off CBA backend technology.[10]
The outage also affected 000 services, with Telstra users being unable to dial the emergency services. Telstra has reported that they have been conducting welfare checks on users that were unable to dial 000, with around 40 welfare reports conducted since 10AM today.[11]
South Australian police have recently begun an investigation into the death of an elderly person that the senator from the state says was due to Telstra’s outage that hindered Triple Zero calls connecting.
South Australian senator Kerrynne Liddle posted on her socials pages that her office had received
“a report of a tragic death following an apparent failure to connect to Triple Zero during a life-or-death emergency”.
SA Police Minister Michael Brown condemned Liddle’s post as “wild, speculative information” that was “downright dangerous”, and police have not yet been able to confirm the report.
Media Minister Anika Wells has commented regarding any potential compensation that Telstra should “Do the right thing by their customers…”, however any welfare and infrastructure concerns must be first rectified.[12]
This is now the third major telco network outage in the past 12 months. Following the disastrous response by Optus last September in which a 14 hour outage left 600 emergency service dialers stranded and three dead,[13] The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) handed down new regulations in March.
All telcos are now required to provide information about any major outage to carriers, carriage service providers, the public and other stakeholders; send updates to customers every six hours in the first 24 hours of the outage and every 24 hours subsequently; put relevant and up to date information on their website; and use a variety of methods to keep customers up to date like SMS or social media.[14]
While Telstra has held press conference statements and made users aware of the outage on their website, web users must specifically search up ‘outage’ before any information is made visible.[15] Telstra has made updates on Facebook and X (formerly known as Twitter), but not on Instagram, raising questions about the extent of compliance with the new laws.
However, it will take time until the root cause of the failure is found. The extent of impact on emergency services and small businesses is currently unknown too. As the situation develops and the ACMA conducts an investigation,[16] the new regulations will face their first real stress test.
[1] https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf-g/telstra-annual-report-2025.pdf
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-08/telstra-network-issues-internet-phones-live/106891206
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erBEGolPONY
[4]https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-08/telstra-nodes-time-keeping-technology-causes-outage/106892560
[5]https://www.nine.com.au/australia-news/telstra-network-hit-with-outage-boost-belong-and-aldi-mobile-customers-also-affected-20260708-p60dhj.html
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erBEGolPONY
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erBEGolPONY
[8]https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-08/telstra-nodes-time-keeping-technology-causes-outage/106892560
[9]https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-08/telstra-nodes-time-keeping-technology-causes-outage/106892560
[10] https://www.commbank.com.au/guidance/newsroom/cba-tfnsw-tap-and-go-busses–201907.html
[11] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-08/telstra-network-issues-internet-phones-live/106891206
[12] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9uurz3LrbA
[13]https://theconversation.com/optus-triple-zero-outage-has-left-multiple-people-dead-a-telecommunications-expert-explains-what-went-wrong-and-how-to-fix-it-265692
[14] https://www.acma.gov.au/rules-significant-and-major-outages
[15] https://www.telstra.com.au/outages
[16]https://www.cyberdaily.au/tech/13871-telstra-outage-ministers-experts-and-academics-respond-acma-to-conduct-full-investigation