(July 8): Telstra Group Ltd said it was investigating an issue affecting some mobile calls and data connections, the latest in a series of outages from Australian telecommunications providers that have raised concerns about network infrastructure in the country.
All regional train services in Victoria state were suspended due to a radio network error linked to the Telstra outage, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported Wednesday morning. Regional and some intercity trains in New South Wales also faced significant delays, the Sydney Morning Herald said.
Telstra detected an issue impacting the nodes that keep time across the network in the early hours Wednesday, chief financial officer Michael Ackland told a briefing. The company had been able to restore some of the nodes but would still need time to reset across thousands of servers, he said.
The company said in a post on X around 10am in Sydney that just under 90% of calls and data were “flowing successfully”.
At this stage there was “nothing to indicate malicious activity”, Ackland said. “We continue to investigate.”
Telstra shares dipped as much as 3.8% in Sydney trading. The stock was up 4.1% this year prior to the outage, outperforming the broader market.
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Australia’s Triple Zero Custodian advised that some callers were unable to connect to the Emergency Call Person, or ECP, and Telstra is investigating, Communications Minister Anika Wells and Acting Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Kristy McBain said in a statement.
“The key priorities for today are to get people back online and ensure any welfare checks are completed urgently,” they said. “The Australian Communications and Media Authority will then conduct a full investigation, and Telstra will need to account for how and why this outage occurred.”
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Another disruption
Telstra users across major capitals were unable to make calls or use mobile data Wednesday morning, with some reporting their phones had dropped into SOS mode, the SMH reported. New South Wales police also said that while emergency systems hadn’t been affected, users may not be able to reach Triple Zero from Telstra devices.
The company provides roughly 25 million retail mobile services.
The latest issue comes after rival provider Optus, which is owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, faced scrutiny over an outage for users accessing emergency services in September 2025 that led to fatalities. After an independent review which criticised the company, Optus said its board had accepted all 21 recommendations.
That failure occurred less than two years after a similar incident impacted millions of Optus customers, including some emergency callers. Vodafone Australia last month said some mobile phone customers experienced connectivity issues.
Telstra itself was penalised more than A$3 million (US$2.1 million or $2.69 million) in 2024 for failing to comply with emergency call rules during a technical disruption at its Triple Zero centre, during which it was hampered in transferring calls to emergency services for 90 minutes.
Telstra’s fresh outage comes after Jarden Securities analysts Liam Robertson and Charles Strong downgraded the telco’s stock to underweight. “The market continues to treat Telstra’s mobile earnings as largely uncontested, capitalising them deep into the next decade at a low required return,” they wrote. “Our call challenges that durability, not the near-term earnings.”
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