Telstra’s mobile services are unavailable for thousands of customers across Australia. The company says it’s aware of the problem and is working to fix it.
Key Takeaways
- Telstra customers across Australia are unable to use their mobile services as the telco has been hit by a national outage.
- Customers in every major city have reported being unable to access Telstra’s mobile network.
- The outage is affecting transport, with train services in some Victorian and New South Wales areas being suspended.
- Western Australia police say the issue has also curtailed Telstra’s Triple Zero emergency call service.
- Telstra says the outage stems from node failure within its network. It has reset the troubled nodes but expects network restoration to take “some time”.
Crucial Quote
“The issue is impacting a number of nodes within our network that keep time across the mobile network, and when these nodes are not operating as expected, which is what has occurred, other parts of the network can be affected, resulting in intermittent issues with some mobile calls and data sessions,” Telstra CFO Michael Ackland told media on Wednesday morning.
“We’ve been able to restore some of these nodes, but it will take time for that to reset across all the thousands of servers across the network.”
Ackland declined to state how many customers were affected but confirmed it was a nation-wide outage. He added Triple Zero services should not be significantly impacted, and that Telstra is investigating reports of emergency calls not working in certain areas.
“At this stage we have nothing to indicate malicious activity,” Ackland said in response to a question on whether Telstra’s systems may have been breached.
Emergency Management Minister Kristy McBain issued the following statement to media:
“The Australian government has been advised by Telstra that there is an outage affecting a large number of mobile calls and connections.”
“Like all telcos, Telstra must notify customers and emergency services of any major outage. Australian phones are also required to fall back to other networks for 000 access.”
Key Background
Telstra customers in every state have reported being unable to access their mobile and data services this morning, with the telco acknowledging a network issue it’s working to fix.
Reports started ticking up around 4am, according to Downdetector, peaking just before 7am. Those reports have come from Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and various regional areas.
The outage is also impacting Aldi Mobile, Tangerine, Boost Mobile and Belong, virtual network operators that run off Telstra’s mobile network.
The outage is affecting more than mobile services, however, with regional train lines in New South Wales and Victoria suspending services.
Victoria’s entire regional V/Line service has been grounded, with the organisation saying “the national Telstra outage” is affecting “the entire network.” Transport NSW says it expects delays across all of its services. Hunter Valley, Southern Highlands and Sydney to Canberra services have already been disrupted.
Western Australia police have also advised some Telstra customers are unable to make Triple Zero calls.
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