EDITORIAL: Crucial mobile networks must be reliable
From missed calls to emergency chaos, the Telstra outage has exposed just how dangerously dependent Australians have become on their phones.
Once upon a time Australians used a telephone sitting on a table or attached to a wall to conduct their business or chat to friends.
Organising daily movements required pre-planning so it all went smoothly.
If there was a change of plan it would mean finding a public telephone booth, hopefully locating some loose change in the wallet or purse, and making a call to reorganise.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.Of course, that era is well and truly over.
We have progressed from early mobile phones which seemed as big as a brick and just as heavy, to today’s models.
And phone calls — actually talking to someone — represent just a fraction of the uses to which we put out mobile devices.
Texting, emails, searching the internet, streaming our favourite shows and sports, taking photos and paying bills are now part of everyday mobile use.
Those devices we carry are powerful tools.
But the flipside is that we have become so reliant on them that we are now extremely vulnerable should the service break down.
This has been demonstrated again through the Telstra outages this week.
The outages prevented more than 604 people from contacting emergency services across Wednesday and Thursday.
Of those cases, 170 were referred to police for in-person welfare checks.
On Friday, after returning from a family holiday overseas, Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady apologised to the nation.
“We have let our customers and Australians down and for that I am deeply sorry,” she said.
Rather embarrassingly, she admitted a team member trying to brief her on Wednesday’s outage couldn’t contact her because they were also affected by the outage, so they had to communicate over Microsoft Teams using the internet.
On Friday Communications Minister Anika Wells confirmed that triple-0 services had been fully restored.
All outstanding welfare checks that Telstra referred to emergency services had been completed and there were no adverse outcomes.
There was no evidence that a South Australian death was related to a failed emergency call during the outage, she said.
The Government had asked the Australian Communications and Media Authority to conduct an independent investigation into the outage and report back within a reasonable timeframe.
Ms Wells said Telstra needed to “face the music”.
“It is going to take Telstra a lot of time and a lot of work to rebuild that trust with Australians, and I want Australians to know that the Government will hold Telstra to account,” she said.
It is not without relevance that the Telstra failure followed a major Optus outage in September 2025 when triple-0 calls were hit and three people died.
Have all the relevant lessons been learnt?
Leaving aside the issues of possible compensation for those hit by the Telstra outage and potential penalties, Australians will want to know why it is possible for the country to be thrown into chaos so easily, and most importantly, what will be done to ensure it does not happen again.
In particular, anything less than laser-focus on safeguarding the critical triple-0 service which Australians need will be unacceptable.
