Telstra investigating outage affecting thousands of customers

Telstra’s mobile network was hit by a widespread outage early on Wednesday, leaving thousands of customers across every mainland capital unable to make calls or use mobile data, with some reporting their phones had dropped into SOS-only mode.

The telco, which runs Australia’s largest mobile network, confirmed it was “looking into an issue affecting some mobile calls and data connections” but had not identified a cause, given an estimated fix time, or said how many customers were affected.

The disruption appeared far larger than Telstra’s description of “some” services. Outage-tracking site Downdetector recorded a sharp spike in reports from about 5am AEST, with more than 7000 lodged by early morning and complaints coming from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra and Adelaide, as well as regional centres in Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania.

“If you’re having trouble connecting, try again as it may work on a retry,” a Telstra spokesperson said. “We’re on it and will share an update as soon as it’s fixed. Thanks for sticking with us.”

The outage also brought down Victoria’s entire regional passenger rail network. V/Line said all its services had stopped after a radio network fault, leaving dozens of trains stationary at regional stations and on Melbourne’s suburban fringe.

About 70,000 people use V/Line each day. Passengers were told to defer travel where possible, with only very limited replacement coaches running and no estimate for when services would resume.

“Services are currently unable to operate” and there was “no estimated time for rectification at this stage”, V/Line said in an update at 7.18am.

The rail disruption crossed the border into New South Wales, where regional and some intercity trains were also delayed. Transport for NSW said “significant delays are expected to all services” because of the outage and urged passengers to allow extra time or defer travel. Suburban Sydney Trains and Metro services appeared unaffected.

The federal government said it had been advised of the outage by Telstra. Emergency Management Minister Kristy McBain said the government was aware of the impact on V/Line and that arrangements were being made for affected passengers.

“The Australian government has been advised by Telstra that there is an outage affecting a large number of mobile calls and connections,” McBain said in a statement. She said Telstra was working to resolve the issue.

McBain said Australian phones were required to fall back to other carriers’ networks to reach Triple Zero, and that Telstra, like all telcos, must notify customers and emergency services of any major outage. It was not clear on Wednesday morning whether that fallback was working for all affected customers.

There were also issues being reported with other providers who rely on Telstra’s wholesale mobile network, including mobile virtual network operators such as Boost Mobile, Belong, Aldi Mobile and Tangerine Telecom.

Tyro, a company that processes eftpos payments, was also investigating “possible system issues”.

“We’re aware of an issue with a national telephone network provider and that some customers may not be able to connect to the 4G network right now to process eftpos transactions,” Tyro said.

The company recommended customers try connecting via ethernet or Wi-Fi until service is restored.

“While this issue is outside Tyro’s control, we’re actively monitoring the situation and will provide updates as they become available,” the company said.

The Australian Communications Consumer Action Network, the peak body for communications consumers, said the outage showed Australia still had no enforceable reliability standards to hold carriers to account for network stability. Its chief executive, Carol Bennett, said Telstra needed to explain “what has happened, who is affected, and when services will be restored”.

Telstra slashed the size of its claimed mobile network coverage by almost a third at the end of June as new rules forcing telcos to measure and report signal strength came into force, standardising methodologies across networks to make it easier for consumers to compare.

The telco provided about 24.9 million retail mobile services as of June last year, according to the company’s most recent figures. It was fined more than $3 million in 2024 over an earlier outage that stopped some customers reaching Tripe Zero.

The federal government has also signalled tougher performance standards for how the major carriers handle Triple Zero calls.

The company has been contacted for further comment.

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