'Shouldn't occur': Change demanded after Telstra outage

The Telstra outage is the latest widespread network failure in recent years. (ABC News: Billy Cooper)

Huge numbers of Telstra customers were yesterday thrown into chaos by a widespread network outage, raising questions about whether telcos are capable of providing reliable phone and internet services.

Optus recently had two network failures, one of which was linked to two deaths and left hundreds of people unable to call emergency services.

Advocates have called for action to ensure telco networks are truly resilient and the adoption of reliability standards to hold telcos more accountable for outages.

Experts and advocates have demanded changes to how telecommunication companies are regulated and held accountable for outages after Telstra became the latest telco to suffer a large-scale network failure.

Telecommunications industry expert and RMIT University associate professor Mark Gregory said recent high-profile outages proved Australia's "fragile" telco networks were not up to the job of always providing reliable phone and internet services.

Dr Gregory said national outages should not happen and questioned whether Telstra had done enough to ensure its network was resilient.

"An outage that takes down a national network is something that should not occur in this day and age," he said.

"We should have resiliency and reliability. There should be redundancy in the core network and what's difficult is finding information about what's actually happening."

Mark Gregory says telco networks have shown they are not always reliable. (ABC News: Darryl Torpey)

Yesterday morning's Telstra outage caused commuter chaos, with multiple train services ground to a halt, and businesses ranging from taxi drivers to cafes unable to process digital payments.

Communications Minister Anika Wells said some Triple Zero (000) calls did not connect, while Telstra said it had conducted more than 330 welfare checks where the call had failed in some way.

Six people told Telstra they needed emergency assistance and more than 79 customers did not pick up and were referred to police.

Late yesterday, Telstra said some calls connected when they were diverted to the Optus or TPG networks, in a process known as camping-on, but others did not.

It comes less than a year since an Optus network failure went for almost 14 hours, leaving hundreds of people unable to call Triple Zero, which was linked to two deaths.

That followed another Optus outage in 2023 that impacted millions of people and health, education, and transport services.

Carol Bennett, CEO of the Australian Communic