Telstra boss Vicki Brady says outage let customers, Australians down
Updated ,first published
Telstra boss Vicki Brady apologized for the company’s mass outage on Wednesday and said she had spoken to Communications Minister Anika Wells and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
“We’ve let our customers and Australians down, and I’m very sorry for that,” Brady said at a news conference in Sydney on Friday.
“We take our trust in Triple Zero extremely seriously, and it is our responsibility to do everything we can to ensure calls are answered and transferred promptly.”
Brady addressed this week’s network outages for the first time since ending his leave early and returning to Australia. He was unaware of the outage until several hours after the incident.
The first signs of the outage appeared around 3am, with Telstra noticing an outage around 4.30am. However, Brady, who was abroad, says he was not notified until around 7 a.m. in the morning, or 7 p.m. in the evening, of Brady’s presence.
“I first became aware of it when I saw a missed message on Teams and a voicemail was left for me by a head of our operations team. I immediately called her back on Teams and we spoke within minutes,” Brady said.
“Once it reached a certain threshold, I was contacted and right at that time we notified key stakeholders like the ministerial office and all these key requirements as well.”
He also defended how the company handled the outage, saying it followed planned protocols.
“We have very clear processes for how we manage incidents, and they escalate at different levels,” he said.
“And it spread, and when it reached the right thresholds, all the right parties were notified.”
It comes as South Australia Police investigate the death of a man in regional South Australia on Wednesday. Police have not linked the death to the outage and are examining the cause and circumstances of the incident, with a report to be sent to the coroner.
Brady and chief financial officer Michael Ackland expressed their condolences to the person’s family and said Telstra was assisting South Australian authorities, including whether there was any link to the outage. Ackland said a review of Telstra’s records had so far found no records of Triple Zero calls from numbers associated with the address, there was a good mobile signal in the area at the time and there was no local outage, and a relevant Triple Zero call from another number was successfully connected.
“Our thoughts are with the person’s family and loved ones,” Ackland said.
This byline first revealed that the outages were caused by a glitch that reset key timing systems to November 2006, causing parts of the network to reject customers’ phones showing the correct time.
Brady rejected suggestions that Telstra’s job cuts or outsourcing contributed to the failure. “There is no indication that any restructuring of business has impacted this particular matter,” he said, adding that the company’s “people and processes are working as they should.”
Brady, who has led Telstra since 2022 and received a salary of $6.7 million in 2025, did not say whether executives would give up bonuses due to the cut and said wages were determined through clear processes overseen by the board. He said whether Telstra’s backup systems were working as intended would be part of the investigation.
Communications Minister Anika Wells approached Telstra on Wednesday to demand “full transparency” over the outages after the company took hours to notify her office that the outage had begun.
Telstra has launched an internal analysis into the outages, while communications regulator ACMA has launched its own investigation on behalf of the government. Telstra was fined more than $3 million in 2024 over an earlier outage that prevented some customers from reaching Triple Zero. The telecommunications company currently faces potential fines worth tens of millions of dollars.
Ackland said 177 cases were referred to police and seven people in need of assistance were identified and forwarded to emergency authorities. It said customers’ compensation will be paid through Telstra’s normal processes, and affected individuals and businesses can contact the company to make a claim.
The outages left hundreds of people unable to communicate with Triple Zero, train services were disrupted in Victoria and New South Wales, and payment systems were disrupted across the country.
The Market Summary newsletter is a summary of the day’s transactions. Take it every weekday afternoon.
David Swan is the technology editor of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor of The Australian newspaper.Connect with: X or email.
