Telstra was warned in November 2020 that the device which brought down its national network on July 8 needed a software update, and never applied it, the company told a Senate inquiry in Canberra on Friday.
Gerard Tracey, the Telstra executive responsible for end-to-end service performance, told the hearing that US supplier Microchip Technology first flagged a "rollover problem" in the SSU 2000 timing server more than five years ago, and sent a further reminder in January. The server, about 15 years old and worth about $30,000, keeps parts of the mobile network synchronised. When power was restored after maintenance on July 8, a GPS card fault reset it to 2006. Invalid authentication certificates then cascaded across the network, blocking calls and data, including calls to triple zero.
The outage ran from about 4.30am to 4pm. Victoria's regional trains stopped, New South Wales services were delayed, and rail freight was paused nationally as a precaution. About 80,000 businesses using Tyro EFTPOS terminals could not take payments. Telstra told the inquiry it has now conducted about 630 welfare checks on customers whose emergency calls failed, nearly double the figure it gave on the day.
Chief executive Vicki Brady apologised to the hearing. "Telstra let Australians down. We let our customers down, we let the community down, and we fell short of what people rightly expect from us," she said, adding she was deeply sorry. "No one should be left wondering whether a call for emergency help will get through."
The inquiry's chair, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, was not persuaded the failure belonged to the machine. "This doesn't seem like a hardware matter. This seems like incompetence," she said.
The question the company could not fully answer on Friday is why two written warnings about a known fault in a $30,000 device sat unactioned for more than five years inside a network that carries about 25 million mobile services. Telstra has commissioned an external investigation into that specific failure, and is accepting compensation claims from customers and small businesses who can document their losses.
The snap inquiry, run by the Senate's environment and communications references committee, was set up within days of the outage. Officials from the communications regulator ACMA and the communications department are also scheduled to give evidence. Parliament itself does not sit again until August 11, which leaves the committee as the only public forum testing Telstra's account until then.
Brady told senators that "Triple Zero sits at the heart of public trust in Australia's communication system." The external investigation has no published deadline. The compensation process is open now.
