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Federal Minister for Communications Anika Wells has weighed in on Telstra’s widespread network outage.
“Telcos are the least trusted industry in our country as we stand today, and days like today demonstrate why Australians feel that way. It will be up to Telstra to make things right,” she said.
Speaking at a press conference, Wells reminded consumers to refrain from making test calls to Triple Zero and pushed back against speculation that foreign actors may have been involved.
“As of today, there is no current evidence to suggest that is the case apart from two parliamentarians going off half-cocked,” she said.
Asked whether this recent outage might see the government accelerate its rollout of a "Text to Triple Zero" solution, Minister Wells pushed back and pointed to the differences between this week’s outage and Optus’ Triple Zero issues in September 2025.
“We are always keen to examine any way we can improve the reliability of our Triple Zero system, but that is not in essence the nature of what has happened today. This is not a Triple Zero outage. This is a Telstra retail outage that has affected their customers right across the country.”
Citing numbers shared with her by Telstra's CFO and Acting CEO, Michael Ackland, earlier in the day, Wells said that there were about three dozen welfare checks in progress for Triple Zero calls that were dropped are currently ongoing.
Despite that, she asserted that this incident demonstrated that changes made following Optus’ infamous Triple Zero outage last year are working as intended.
“People should be reassured that the Triple Zero core system continued and that the overwhelming majority of Triple Zero calls went through, and that Telstra, now in conjunction with the Triple Zero custodian, are working through those welfare checks,” she said.
Well confirmed that the Triple Zero custodian is keeping a detailed tick-tock of who knew what when and that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will conduct a full investigation of the matter.
“It’s for Telstra to explain how and why this happened,” she said.
Minister Wells wasn’t the only one issuing stern words for Telstra today.
Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) CEO Carol Bennet said that the impact of outages like this one was immediate and real.
“Every telco outage carries a cost - to public safety, to business operations, to social connection, and to the economy at large,” she said
“This is only the latest in a spate of reliability flashpoints across the Australian telco sector. Consumers are right to ask: how much longer before these companies are held to account for their networks, with enforceable reliability requirements rather than voluntary commitments?”
Meanwhile, Communication Workers Union (CWU) National Secretary Shane Murph pointed the finger at Telstra’s recent workforce cuts as a likely cause.
“This is what happens when you prioritise the bottom line over critical services; you get an unreliable network that lets Australians down time and time again."
“It is disgraceful to see one of the nation’s largest carriers make shocking cuts to its workforce – the individuals who keep us connected – and witness the detrimental impact on the quality of services."
As of a 10am press conference, Telstra does not yet know the root cause of the issue — which was related to how nodes keep time synchronised across the network — and is still investigating.
Fergus Halliday
Digital Content Editor
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