Telstra was scrambling on Wednesday night to resolve a second network fault affecting Triple Zero calls — just hours after the country's largest telco declared it had fixed a catastrophic daytime outage that had disrupted emergency services, rail networks and payment systems across Australia.
In a statement released around 9.30pm AEST, Telstra confirmed it had identified a "secondary issue" impacting some calls, including to Triple Zero, even as it insisted the fault behind the earlier nationwide failure had been fully resolved. The fresh problem capped one of the most damaging days in the company's recent history.
What the Second Triple Zero Fault Means for Callers
Telstra warned that customers attempting to dial Triple Zero during the secondary outage might hear an error message while their handset tried to connect to an alternative mobile network. The company advised anyone who encountered this problem to wait up to 90 seconds for their phone to automatically switch to a rival network — and, if that failed, to try calling from a different device entirely.
The telco also confirmed it would conduct a welfare check whenever it detected a failed Triple Zero call, continuing a process it had already been carrying out throughout the day. "We're working urgently to resolve this issue," Telstra said in its statement.
For further background on the day's earlier emergency services disruptions, see our coverage of the Telstra outage that triggered a Triple Zero crisis and hundreds of welfare checks.
The Daytime Outage: A Software Glitch Sent the Network Back to 2006
The secondary fault came after an already chaotic day triggered by a nationwide outage that began in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Two internal Telstra sources attributed the failure to a software defect that caused the network's timekeeping systems to revert to 2006 — nearly two decades in the past. Because modern mobile networks depend on precise timing to authenticate devices, the corrupted date caused parts of the network to reject customers' handsets outright.
Telstra's chief financial officer, Michael Ackland, confirmed that a software fault had altered the time across the network and said the company was still working through the full details. He said the daytime disruption had been resolved by 4pm but acknowledged that the fallout was more severe than initially understood, with more Triple Zero calls failing than first reported after some phones did not successfully switch to Optus or TPG networks for emergency calls.
"We let customers down today in their hour of need. There's nothing that makes that untrue for many of those customers who are in traumatic situations, and we apologise for that deeply," Ackland said.
Telstra carried out 333 welfare checks on customers detected as having failed to connect to emergency services — through SMS, phone calls and in-person police visits. Around 79 people could not be reached through those checks, prompting police to attend their homes. NSW Police were asked to carry out 13 in-person welfare checks, with four still to be completed, but had not found any adverse outcomes at the time of reporting.
Death Claim Disputed by South Australian Police
The day also produced a serious and contested claim involving a potential fatality. Liberal Senator Kerrynne Liddle said her office had received a report of an elderly South Australian dying after apparently being unable to reach Triple Zero during the outage. The senator described it as "a devastating failure" for the family involved.
However, South Australia Police flatly disputed the claim, stating they were not aware of any death in the state as a result of the outage. In a follow-up statement, a spokesperson said the family had been advised to contact South Australia Police when they were ready to discuss their experience.
Wider Disruption and Mounting Pressure on Telstra
Beyond the emergency services failures, Wednesday's outage brought down Victoria's entire regional passenger rail network, caused delays to some NSW train services, and hit payment terminals, electric-vehicle chargers and smaller carriers — including Boost, Belong and Aldi Mobile — that rely on Telstra's infrastructure. Read more on how the Telstra outage shut down Victoria's regional train network.
Communications Minister Anika Wells cut short her leave to address the crisis, saying there was "a reason that telcos are the least trusted industry in Australia — it is days like today." Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady brought forward her return from overseas leave to Friday.
The financial and regulatory consequences are likely to be significant. Telstra was fined more than $3 million in 2024 over an earlier outage that also blocked Triple Zero access. It now faces potential penalties in the tens of millions of dollars for Wednesday's events, amid sustained scrutiny of the sector following two major Optus failures — including a November 2023 nationwide outage that left roughly 10 million services offline and approximately 2,000 people unable to reach Triple Zero.
