Telstra CEO Vicki Brady and CFO Michael Ackland are set to face a Senate grilling after the telco's latest national outage, which left millions without mobile service and disrupted emergency calls. The outage, caused by a software fault in Telstra's time-telling systems, occurred on Wednesday morning and led to a cascade of failures across the network.
Outage Details and Impact
At 7am Sydney time, Brady was informed of the major outage affecting millions of customers. The disruption took train services offline, stopped some EV chargers from working, prevented shops from using Eftpos, and hindered some customers from calling triple zero. Telstra later conducted 639 welfare checks on triple-zero users, with seven requiring assistance after initially failing to get through to emergency services.
Brady, who was on a European summer holiday with her family, returned to Australia on Friday to face a media firestorm. She confirmed the outage was caused by a software defect in Telstra's time-telling systems, which mistakenly told the network it was November 2006. This led to a "digital domino chain fall," according to one expert, bringing the network down in minutes.
Senate Inquiry and Regulatory Scrutiny
Executives are set to front a snap meeting of a triple-zero parliamentary inquiry as early as next week. Federal Minister Jason Clare welcomed the scrutiny, stating, "People could have lost their lives and that's why there's an investigation by ACMA." Communications Minister Anika Wells said trust "stands in peril" and she would "hold Telstra's feet to the fire," adding that the telco's response was not good enough.
Telstra has 45 days to provide a report to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) explaining the outage and steps taken to prevent recurrence. Deputy ACMA Chair Adam Suckling said the investigation would examine the maintenance and configuration of Telstra's network. The company could face civil penalties of up to $30 million under powers introduced after the 2025 Optus outage.
Apologies and Welfare Checks
Brady apologized to Australians for the outage and spoke to the family of an elderly woman in South Australia who died during the disruption. Telstra and SA Police concluded the outage was not responsible for the woman's death, but Brady offered condolences to family members who were unable to contact each other when their loved one became unwell.
This is the third major national outage in less than a year for the $56 billion giant, which powers about 25 million Australian mobile services. Brady said she takes responsibility to maintain trust in triple zero "extremely seriously" and committed to implementing changes needed.
Expert Calls for Regulatory Overhaul
RMIT Associate Professor and telecommunications expert Mark Gregory said Australia's legislation needs to be rebuilt "structurally from the ground up and in tune with the modern era." He noted that the Telecommunications Act, which came into effect in 1997, was written when the internet was new, smartphones did not exist, and streaming was not possible. Wells acknowledged substantial improvements since the Optus 2025 outage but conceded more work is needed, stating, "There is a large gap between the way that this industry has been regulated for a long time - 30 years - to what a modern customer expects of their telco."
