Telstra mobile outage halts trains, traffic lights and payments for nearly five hours

A national Telstra mobile outage on Wednesday lasted nearly five hours and stopped train operations, traffic lights and Eftpos payments in multiple states. The company said the disruption began when time-keeping servers stopped feeding accurate data to other network systems.

Chief financial officer Michael Ackland told reporters that many computer systems rely on synchronized time to authenticate network activity.

Government response The communications minister returned from leave to address the outage and said the federal government had checked emergency call systems with the new triple zero custodian. The minister stated that telcos remain the least trusted industry in Australia and called on all carriers to improve reliability.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority was asked to investigate the outage, and Telstra agreed to provide further updates to the minister.

Industry and expert views Professor Hussain Dia of Swinburne University of Technology said transport networks need communications systems that can tolerate faults without stopping service. Adjunct Associate Professor Graeme Hughes of Griffith University recommended that policymakers require multi-carrier routing for public transport and essential services.

Associate Professor Mamello Thinyane of Adelaide University suggested businesses consider fixed-line and 5G connections from multiple providers. The outage follows earlier national disruptions at Optus in 2023 and 2025 and the 2024 global Crowdstrike incident.