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Australia’s largest telco Telstra has apologised to customers after it suffered a major nationwide outage on Wednesday 8 July that left potentially millions of Australians unable to access the internet or make phone calls, including to Triple Zero.
Telstra CFO Michael Ackland stated that at approximately 4.30am AEDT, the telco identified “an issue affecting a number of nodes that help keep time across parts of our mobile network”.
“When the network lost synchronisation it caused intermittent impacts to some voice and data services,” he said.
“Our teams worked immediately to identify the fault, isolate the device, and restore the affected network nodes to progressively return services to normal.”
Ackland noted that after resolving its original outage, Telstra identified a subsequent issue affecting calls, including Triple Zero. He said people who were trying to call Triple Zero received an error message.
“This was a consequence of the same software defect which caused the initial outage,” Ackland said.
He assured customers it was “not the result of a cyber incident”.
Ackland said when the telco giant identified customers were unable to make Triple Zero calls, welfare checks were initiated automatically as part of its operational procedures.
As of 15 July, Telstra reported it completed 604 welfare check over the course of the outage. Of those, 23 were referred to relevant emergency services organisation for assistance, another 144 did not respond and were referred to police for follow-up.
“Since this solution was put in place, no further welfare checks have been required for this issue,” Ackland said.
“This process operated as intended and was initiated automatically. We are working closely with Emergency Services nationally and are not aware of any life threatening outcomes.”
The telco giant is now offering customers affected by the outage compensation. For residential and consumer customers, it’s a matter of submitting an online complaint form. However, for small business customers, they are required to provide “additional supporting information documentation” as proof they loss business during the outage.
However, in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Carol Bennett, Chief Executive of peak communications consumer body the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, criticised Telstra for its compensation process.
“I think it’s wrong to put the burden of proof back on consumers … this needs to be proactive. It needs to be real and it needs to be automatic,” she told the ABC.
