Telstra CEO Vicki Brady returns to Australia after being on leave during nationwide outage
Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady has returned to Australia as pressure mounts following the nationwide outage which affected triple 0 calls and sent systems into meltdown.
Ms Brady, who was on leave overseas when the major outage occurred on Wednesday, landed in Sydney on Friday morning.
He was accompanied by media counsel and did not answer questions about possible compensation for customers affected by the outage, according to The Daily Telegraph.
However, he confirmed that he would appear before the media at a press conference later on Friday.
The network outage was first reported around 4.30am on Wednesday, with thousands of users reporting service and connectivity issues in all major cities across the country.
Michael Ackland, the telco’s chief financial officer, spoke to reporters in Ms Brady’s place on Wednesday and Thursday and said the outage was likely caused by a “software bug” that left thousands of customers and businesses disconnected and affected some triple 0 calls.
The telecommunications company said the problem was caused by nodes used to synchronize time on the mobile network.
Secondary issue affects triple 0 calls
A secondary issue affecting triple 0 calls on Telstra’s network was reported later on Wednesday and continued into Thursday.
Earlier on Thursday, Mr Ackland said the secondary issue was “affecting some calls, including triple-0”.
“In these cases, when you call triple-0, you will receive an error message and your phone will try to connect to an alternative mobile network,” he said.
The telco said 639 triple-0 calls failed to arrive or were dropped; that was twice the number first publicly reported Wednesday.
Telstra has carried out more than 600 welfare checks since the outage was first reported and 170 calls have been referred to police for further action.
“A total of seven callers reported requiring further assistance and their details were passed on to the relevant emergency services organisations,” Mr Ackland said.
On Thursday afternoon, Communications Minister Anika Wells said Telstra was no longer running welfare checks as triple-0 service returned to normal.
South Australian Police are currently investigating whether the death of an elderly person at a regional hospital is linked to the outage.
The investigation comes after Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle said her office had received a report that an elderly South Australian had died during a network failure on Wednesday morning.
Mr Ackland said Telstra was still investigating the root cause of the outage but was “confident” it had identified a software bug and isolated it.
“We’ll start with resources, working with suppliers, working with partners, external support and working with our own teams to understand what’s happening,” he said.
More to come
