Telstra has disclosed that more than 600 emergency calls failed to connect during Wednesday's nationwide network outage, which affected millions of customers across the country. The revelation came during a press conference on Thursday, where Telstra Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland confirmed the scale of the triple-0 failures.
Failed Emergency Calls and Welfare Checks
Despite approximately 33,000 triple-0 calls successfully reaching emergency services during the outage, over 600 calls failed to connect. Ackland described the situation as unacceptable, stating, "One missed call is unacceptable. Which is why we have the welfare check process in place, so that we are as rapidly as possible following up with people whenever there is a failed call."
Telstra completed 639 welfare checks after identifying the failed emergency calls. Of those, 230 callers responded to an SMS advising they did not require assistance, while 402 cases required follow-up phone calls. Ackland noted that 170 cases were referred to police for further welfare checks or assistance, and seven callers advised they needed help, with their details passed to the relevant emergency services.
Cause of the Triple-0 Failures
The company revealed that the triple-0 failures were caused by a secondary fault that only became apparent after engineers restored Wednesday's nationwide outage. "Last night, we identified a subsequent issue that was impacting some calls, including triple-0. And the nature of this only became apparent as we resolved the original issue," Ackland said. He added that the issue was a consequence of the same software defect discussed the previous day, and while the original issue was addressed, the subsequent issue required a different approach.
Resolution and Ongoing Investigation
Ackland confirmed that engineers worked through the night to implement a solution, and no further welfare checks have been required since the fix was deployed. "Overnight, our teams made good progress, significantly reducing the occurrence of failed calls to triple-0, and we've now implemented a solution that has addressed the impact of this issue. Customers can feel confident in calling triple-0," he said.
Telstra has already begun a full root-cause investigation while continuing to restore any remaining services. "We will continue to investigate, continue to dig deeper, continue to go down all avenues to ensure that we're doing everything that we can to make sure that our system is as robust and reliable as possible," Ackland stated.
CEO Returns from Overseas
Despite defending the resilience of Australia's emergency calling system, Ackland again acknowledged the outage was unacceptable. He said, "I think customers can trust the triple-0 system. It is a very robust system. No system is completely immune from impacts and outage. It is unacceptable what has happened." Ackland also confirmed that Telstra Chief Executive Officer Vicki Brady is returning to Australia after cutting short an overseas family holiday, noting that she "got on the first plane that she could get on to" and will be "back on deck tomorrow."
