Telstra Australia outage sparks triple-0 emergency as new fault emerges after nationwide network failure

Telstra is racing to resolve a new issue affecting some triple-0 calls after a nationwide outage knocked out mobile services for millions of Australians and triggered hundreds of emergency welfare checks.

The telecommunications giant revealed late Wednesday that, despite restoring the core network failure, engineers had uncovered a separate problem affecting some emergency calls.

Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland said the company identified the issue at about 9pm.

“While we’ve restored the issue that caused today’s outage, we’ve identified a secondary issue impacting some calls including triple-0,” he said.

“In these cases, when you call triple-0 you will receive an error message and your phone will try to connect to an alternative mobile network.”

Early Thursday, Telstra said engineers had made “good progress”, reducing triple-0 call errors by about 90 per cent.

“Our welfare checks process remains in place, and we continue to advise customers who experience the issue to wait for the call to be connected via an alternative network or recall using a different phone.”

The outage prompted an extensive welfare response after failed or dropped emergency calls.

It was reported by 5.30pm Wednesday, Telstra has carried out 395 welfare checks, with 79 people referred to police for physical welfare checks.

Six people confirmed they required assistance.

“The volume of welfare checks was higher than we expected, which prompted us to investigate further,” a Telstra statement read.

“We expect these numbers are inflated by a larger number of people calling to test Triple-0, and as a flow-on from the core issue.

“Our backup systems worked as they should throughout.”

NSW Police received 13 welfare check requests linked to the outage, with four still outstanding on Wednesday night.

“There have been no adverse outcomes identified at this time arising out of the welfare checks; however, we understand further requests may be forthcoming from Telstra,” a spokesperson told NewsWire.

Tasmania Police also confirmed three failed Triple-0 call attempts during Wednesday morning’s outage, but said all callers were later contacted and none required emergency assistance.

Software fault behind outage

The nationwide outage began about 4am Wednesday, leaving Telstra customers across every major city without mobile services for several hours.

Mr Ackland said the incident was caused by a software defect rather than a cyber attack.

“That is the current understanding … there was a software fault that caused the GPS node to reset, which changed the time and caused the time desynchronisation,” he said.

While he stopped short of blaming human error, he acknowledged improvements were needed.

“There is something in our process that we need to fix and change.”

Rail disruption rolls into Thursday

The outage continued to disrupt rail services across NSW and Victoria on Thursday.

In NSW, replacement buses remained in operation on the Hunter and Southern Highlands lines after communications systems failed to fully recover.

“Trains are still not running between these stations due to the ongoing effects of yesterday’s external telecommunication issue,” a Transport for NSW spokesman said.

“Passengers should continue to allow extra travel time, listen to announcements and check information displays for updates.”

In Victoria, V/Line suspended all passenger services on Thursday morning.

“The V/Line network continues to be impacted following the nationwide Telstra telecommunications outage, with passenger services unable to operate,” the operator said.

The Australian Rail Track Corporation said ongoing telecommunications issues meant it was not yet safe to resume normal rail operations.

Scam warning for customers

Telstra has also warned customers to be vigilant as scammers attempt to exploit the outage.

“If you get a call from someone claiming to be Telstra asking you for details in light of today’s outage, please hang up and call us back directly,” Mr Ackland said.

Technology expert Trevor Long urged customers to be equally cautious of emails claiming to be from the telco.

“Don’t trust any email that says ‘It’s Telstra, click this link right now’,” he said.

“That’s going to be the worst thing you could do as a Telstra customer.

“So take caution for any communication you get from Telstra. Before you click any links pick up the phone (and) ring them.”