A major Telstra mobile network outage brought parts of Australia to a standstill on Wednesday, disrupting train services, flights, payment terminals and emergency calls. The outage began at 4:30 a.m. AEST and affected thousands of mobile customers, with regional rail services in Victoria halted entirely and flights to mining sites delayed by up to three hours, stranding hundreds of fly-in, fly-out workers. Perth Airport was particularly hard hit.
Telstra CFO Michael Ackland attributed the disruption to a fault in a time-synchronisation server at data centres in Sydney and Melbourne, and said there was no indication of a cyberattack. Around 90 percent of services were restored by mid-morning. Eftpos systems operated by CommBank and Tyro were knocked offline, and Western Australia police reported impaired triple-zero call access.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the outage deeply concerning, while the Australian Communications and Media Authority opened an investigation.