Telstra has officially informed the Triple Zero custodian that the recent service outage is now fully resolved, federal Communications Minister Anika Wells has confirmed.
Wells announced that welfare checks initiated due to the disruption of Telstra’s Triple Zero service have been concluded, and fortunately, authorities reported “no adverse outcomes associated with those referrals.”
Despite this positive report, Wells emphasized that Telstra “has a lot of questions to answer.”
“Rebuilding the trust of Australians will require significant effort and time from Telstra,” she remarked, stressing that the Albanese government “will hold them accountable.”
Earlier on Friday, Telstra clarified that there was no “active outage” in the South Australian area where a woman died during the company’s network disruptions on Wednesday, which had affected calls to Triple Zero.
Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland said on Friday the telco has found no records of Telstra mobile numbers associated with the address where the woman died to the Triple Zero platforms.
“We also confirm there were no active outages affecting the local area at that time, and our records show good mobile signal strength at that location,” he said.
Ackland said Telstra found a related call was “successfully made to 000 from another number”, which correctly connected the caller to the relevant emergency service.
South Australian police said on Wednesday they were investigating a death in the state, after Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle linked it to the Telstra outage.
Police had earlier said in a social media comment on Liddle’s page that they were unaware of any deaths during the outage.
Liddle then criticised the state’s police minister for questioning her integrity, saying the family of the deceased person reported the incident to police on Thursday, after her office received the report.
In a media statement on Friday afternoon, South Australia Police said the suggestion the woman had died following a failed Triple Zero call was incorrect.
It said the woman’s partner had found her unresponsive following a medical episode and called a neighbour who had medical experience on his Telstra mobile. The neighbour rang Triple Zero on her Telstra mobile for an ambulance and the woman was taken by ambulance to hospital, where she later died.
Police said the woman’s partner had later reported being unable to contact relatives on his phone while at the hospital and this may have been misinterpreted and led to the incorrect claim about the Triple Zero call.
Liddle has since apologised, posting on social media late on Friday afternoon that her concerns were “based on information available at the time”.
“To the family who have lost a loved one, I offer my sincere apologies for what you have been through and for any confusion to the broader community,” she wrote.
Telstra denies job layoffs led to the outage
Telstra’s chief executive Vicki Brady said on Friday she was notified about the mass outage at 7am on Wednesday, almost three hours after it occurred.
“Our focus will be what are the lessons out of this, what changes we need to make, but I do really want to raise that we do have very clear processes around how we manage incidents,” she said.
Brady said while Telstra is still investigating the incident, the outage seemed to be triggered by an error following a software restart.
Earlier this year, Telstra announced it would cut up to 650 jobs as the company outsourced some tasks overseas. Brady rejected claims that the incident was related to the mass redundancies at the company.
“No indication any restructure of jobs has impacted the particular issue.”