Emergency calls, bill payments hit by Telstra outage
Triple Zero callers, drivers, The Ghan travellers and businesses trying to get paid are among thousands of South Australians impacted by an outage from the nation’s leading telecommunications provider. Read the latest update.
Emergency services, hospitality businesses and traffic delays are flagged as some of the most serious impacts in South Australia following a nationwide Telstra outage this morning.
The telco that powers about 25 million mobile services across the country confirmed on Wednesday morning it was urgently investigation the problem impacting “some mobile calls and data connections”. The outage also affected Aldi Mobile, Belong and Boost Mobile which operate in Telstra’s network.
SA Police confirmed Telstra telecommunications users trying to call emergency services could be impacted by the outage.
“A Telstra outage occurring this morning is still currently affecting customers nationwide, impacting their ability to make phone calls, which may also have included calls to triple-zero from Telstra services,” a spokesperson said.
“If you are in an emergency and cannot contact the emergency services, seek an alternate mobile phone, seek immediate assistance from neighbours, local emergency services, or community support networks.”
Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland said calls to triple-zero had not been “impacted in the same way” as other phone call services but confirmed there had been reports of customers unable to reach emergency services.
“”We have seen a small number of reports that we are investigating and, as part of our standard process, which has been operating through the night and through this morning, we conduct welfare checks when any call to triple-zero fails and we’ve been doing this,” Ackland said.
“We do ask customers not to test and try out triple-zero unless you need triple-zero.”
Ackland said the company does not “yet know the root cause” of the outage but that stemmed from an error with Telstra’s “nodes”.
“We are investigating that urgently and will provide updates as soon as we get more information about the root cause,” Ackland said.
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Ambulance Services
An SA Ambulance Services spokesperson said it was continuing to “monitor the situation” and remained in regular contact with Telstra as the system was restored.
“SAAS has been able to connect with callers during the network outage. SAAS is reviewing any delayed contacts to us during this time and have followed up with callers who may have experienced a delay,” the spokesperson said.
Hospital services across the state had minimal impact an SA Health spokesperson has confirmed, saying approximately 90 per cent of its communication systems are with a different network provider.
“We continue to monitor the situation while Telstra works to resolve the problem, with business continuity plans enacted in readiness if the situation is not resolved.”
However, Acting Premier Kyam Maher said at a 9.45am press conferenced that there had not been an impact on public transport other than real-time tracking of buses and trains, and was still seeking further information about ambulance services.
“It’s not good enough, it leads to massive inconvenience for people, it leads to big changes in the way people conduct their lives, people have become so reliant on being connected to do what they need to do, but it becomes a very big inconvenience,” he said.
Hospitality and Retail
Hospitality and retail businesses across the state were impacted with major EFTPOS service Tyro having its services temporarily unavailable due to network errors.
Tyro is one of the largest payment providers in Australia with about 80,000 businesses across operating on its EFTPOS system.
“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,” a Tyro statement said.
“While this issue is outside Tyro’s control, we’re actively monitoring the situation and will provide updates as they become available.”
Transport
Adelaide Metro has also had its real-time tracking information and public transport services impacted.
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“Due to a nationwide telecommunications outage, real-time information and some Adelaide Metro services may be unavailable,” an Adelaide Metro statement said.
The Australian Rail Track Corporation has also had its services brought to “a standstill” a spokesperson has confirmed. It will affect services to The Ghan, which travels 2979 kilometres between Adelaide and Darwin.
“As a safety precaution, ARTC has implemented established emergency protocols and safely brought rail services on the network to a stand while the telecommunications outage is resolved,” an ARTC spokesperson said.
“At this stage, there is no confirmed timeframe for restoration of telecommunications services. Once communications are restored, it will take some time for the network to safely return to normal operations.”
A Department of Infrastructure and Transport spokesperson also confirmed the Traffic Communication Centre lost contact with about 300 traffic lights across SA in the early hours of the morning.
Although traffic lights did not go out, they were functioning on a standardised signal timing which may have caused traffic delays and congestion to commuters on their way to work.
The spokesperson confirmed the Traffic Communication Centre had regained connection and now had “visibility” on all traffic lights.
At 9:45 Wednesday morning, Telstra updated customers via social media to alert that most mobile services were back online.
“We’ve made good progress restoring this morning’s issue affecting some mobile services, with just under 90 per cent of calls and data now flowing successfully across the network,” the statement said.
“Our teams are working as quickly as possible to restore remaining services and get all customers back online.
“We know how much you rely on our network and understand just how much of a disruption this has been to your day. For that, we’re sorry. We’ll continue to update you here until everything is resolved.”
The latest outage comes after other telecommunications giants Vodafone and Optus experienced recent outages that proved fatal.
In June, Vodafone customers were left with intermittent reception and data issues across Australia.
The telco said customers who could not access the network were able to use triple zero by connecting to other available mobile networks.
Two deaths have been linked to an outage at Optus in September 2025, which lasted almost 14 hours and affected hundreds of calls in four states and territories.
New rules were handed down by the Australian Communications and Media Authority in March forcing telcos to publish when the outage started and when it was restored in detail as well as the cause.
-with AAP
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