Telstra says its network is fully back online after a nationwide outage which caused significant disruptions including another failure of Triple Zero calls.
Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland said all remaining services had been restored as of 4pm. Anyone still experiencing connection issues is instructed to restart their device, which should resolve any remaining problems.
Mr Ackland said the outage was caused by a software defect, not a cyber attack.
“This was not the result of a cyber incident,” he said.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a botched firmware update caused some of Telstra’s timing servers to incorrectly reset their clocks by 1024 weeks, almost 20 years, making them believe the date was November 2006 instead of July 2026. Mobile networks rely on accurate timing to authenticate devices, and the wrong date caused parts of the network to reject customers’ phones.
“There was an update, and it did impact what’s known as the GPS node, which caused the time to re-sync,” Mr Ackland said.
Telstra is urging customers to be “extra vigilant” against scammers and phishing attempts following the outage, with reports of people receiving calls from scammers pretending to be Telstra. Mr Ackland said anyone receiving a call from someone claiming to be from Telstra and asking for personal details should hang up and call Telstra back directly.
Telstra identified some 333 failed calls to Triple Zero during the outage. Some were able to get through when their phones swapped to the Optus or TPG networks under emergency protocols. Of the remainder, 79 people could not be reached and were referred to police for physical welfare checks, while six people who needed assistance were helped immediately.
“The volume was higher than expected,” Mr Ackland said, adding he believed the figure was inflated by people testing Triple Zero.
One of those who ‘tested’ whether Triple Zero was working was Shadow Communications Minister Sarah Henderson, who defended her actions, and argued that she had not broken the law by doing so.
“I was concerned about the wellbeing of Australians,” she said.
“For anyone to suggest that this was some breach of the law because I was making a vexatious or hoax call is just ridiculous.”
Earlier in the day Opposition Leader Angus Taylor and Member for New England Barnaby Joyce both questioned whether the outage was linked to a Chinese missile test in the Pacific this week, without any evidence to support their alarmist comments.
“I don’t want to be paranoid or a conspiracy theorist, but we know there is the capacity for China to affect that sort of software and that sort of network,” Mr Joyce told Sky News.
Communications Minister Anika Wells rejected the suggestion, saying she had been reassured by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke that there was no evidence of malicious activity.
“As of today, there is no current evidence to suggest that is the case, apart from two parliamentarians going half-cocked,” she said.
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