Telstra outage linked to undocumented software change, chief executive tells senators

Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady told senators the company’s latest outage was likely caused by an undocumented design change and a missed software update on a network time-keeping device. The failure reset network clocks to 2006 and affected more than 1,400 calls to emergency services.

The explanation turns the outage into a question of governance, not just engineering. In a telecommunications network that carries emergency access, payments and day-to-day communications, software changes are supposed to be documented, tested and reversible before they go live. A time-keeping device that can knock systems back to 2006 points to a breakdown in change-control, audit and fail-safe procedures.

The company had also been warned six months before the national outage, but did not apply a software fix that could have prevented it. That detail has sharpened scrutiny of Telstra’s internal decision-making as the federal government warned the carrier it could face penalties of up to $30 million. Brady and chief financial officer Michael Ackland were due before a Senate inquiry in Canberra, while Telstra ran its own internal investigation and the Australian Communications and Media Authority examined the incident.

The pressure lands on a company that has already been fined over emergency-call failures. On Dec. 11, 2024, ACMA said Telstra had paid a penalty of more than $3 million for failing to comply with emergency call rules during a technical disruption. Telstra also apologised after a separate 2024 triple-zero outage prevented more than 100 calls from being transferred to emergency services. With emergency access already under close watch, the latest outage has raised the harder issue of whether regulators can push carriers to prove their software controls are strong enough before another failure reaches the public.