CANBERRA: Disrupted rail services in Australia were starting to resume Thursday (July 9), after a Telstra Group Ltd. network outage knocked out mobile and data services across the country a day earlier and halted trains in some areas.
Australian Rail Track Corp., which operates the freight and passenger rail network across five states, said services were expected to return to normal from later in the day, providing operators were ready to resume. ARTC, which uses Telstra’s 4G network to communicate with train drivers, paused passenger services after the outage.
"Priority is being given to the staged return of key passenger services, including metropolitan and regional services in New South Wales, V/Line services in Victoria and interstate passenger services,” ARTC said in a statement.
Federal Communications Minister Anika Wells told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Thursday morning that Telstra was working through a "secondary issue,” overnight on Wednesday, in which some calls were going straight to message and some Triple Zero calls were not going through.
The secondary problem was uncovered after an initial software issue - which affected the nodes that keep time across its system - was resolved, Telstra Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland told a Thursday briefing. A solution has now been implemented, he said.
Telstra - which provides roughly 25 million retail mobile services - conducted 639 welfare checks after failed Triple Zero calls, he added.
"Mobile networks are complex and we will continue to work through further changes to ensure we have the most robust solution, but customers can feel confident in calling Triple Zero,” Ackland said.
Chief Executive Vicki Brady has cut a family vacation abroad short and will be back at work on Friday, Ackland said. Telstra shares were up one per cent at 1.17 p.m. in Sydney trading on Thursday, after falling three per cent the day before..
Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Cynthia Gebert said the outage had a significant impact on people’s daily lives, including lost income and disruptions to travel.
"What we really want to see is that we get to the bottom of what’s actually been causing this issue so we can prevent it happening again,” she said in an interview on Nine’s Today program. "This is not how Australians want to be living their lives, anxious that they’re not going to be able to rely on telco as an essential service.”
The disruption is the latest telecommunications failure to raise questions about the reliance of Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure.
Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.-owned Optus, faced outcry over an outage for users accessing emergency services in September 2025 that led to fatalities. That incident occurred less than two years after a similar incident impacted millions of Optus customers, including some emergency callers.
Vodafone Australia last month also said some mobile phone customers experienced connectivity issues. - Bloomberg
