Telstra executives faced a Senate inquiry on Friday over last week’s nationwide outage, which blocked more than 600 Triple Zero calls.
No deaths were linked to the outage.
The inquiry examined what caused the disruption, which also affected businesses and public transport, whether underinvestment played a role, and whether the telecommunications sector needs stronger regulation.
Telstra CEO Vicki Brady apologised, saying the telco “let Australians down.”
Here’s what to know.
Outage
The outage began around 4:30amon Wednesday after a softwarefault caused equipment responsible for synchronising timeacross parts of Telstra’s network to malfunction.
When the network fell out of sync, many of Telstra’s 25 million customers were left without mobile or data services.
Train services across NSW and Victoria were disrupted, while some businesses were unable to process EFTPOS payments.
The outage also prevented more than 600 calls from connecting to Triple Zero.
Telstra subsequently carried out 639 welfare checks, with seven callers found to require assistance.
Most services were restored by 4pm on Wednesday, but problems affecting Triple Zero calls were not fully resolved until 1:30pm on Thursday.
Your contribution ensures The Daily Aus can continue doing the work you love.
I want to give $10 monthly to help TDA keep doing the news.
Your details:
Senate inquiry
The Senate inquiry was established after the 2025 Optus outage and expanded to investigate Telstra’s network failure. Telstra executives gave evidence on Friday.
Telstra CEO Vicki Brady confirmed the outage was triggered by an update to the “network time protocol server”, which keeps parts of the mobile network “in time with each other.”
An “underlying software configuration” caused the server to restart with a different date, throwing parts of the network out of sync.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who chaired the hearing, questioned why telecommunications companies did not face greater consequences for failures involvingcritical infrastructure.
Prior to the inquiry, she called for Telstra to compensate affected customers.
Telstra told the inquiry it had written to 8.8 million individuals and small businesses, with around $100,000 in compensation paid through customer credits so far.
“Today, we see it’s not an Optus problem, it’s also a Telstra problem,” Hanson-Young said.
What’s next?
Telstra is conducting an internal investigation, while the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is investigating whether the company met its legal and regulatory obligations.
Telstra could face civil penalties of up to $30 million for failures involving Triple Zero.
However, customers do not have an automatic right to compensation for broader mobile service outages.
