Urgent welfare checks for callers caught in Triple Zero failure
Queensland police are carrying out emergency welfare checks on more than a dozen people whose emergency calls failed during Wednesday’s nationwide telecommunications outage, prompting a second failure on the network.
Police said 17 people tried to call Triple Zero during the outage, which began around 4 a.m., and were unable to connect to services.
A police spokesman said they were working with Telstra to identify all unsuccessful calls and Policelink would carry out welfare checks.
“The Queensland Triple Zero service remains operational and people experiencing an emergency should continue to call Triple Zero,” Queensland Police Service said.
“Affected customers should check with their provider about what the outage means for them.”
Telstra said More than 300 Triple Zero calls across Australia failed during Wednesday’s outage. This outage was caused by a 20-year-old “time travel” glitch triggered by issues with a firmware upgrade.
But in a statement released on Wednesday night, Telstra said a second network failure was affecting some calls, including Triple Zero calls, just hours after the telco scrambled to resolve the daytime outage.
Telstra said People calling Triple Zero may hear an error message as their phone tries to connect to another mobile network, urging anyone unable to reach emergency services to wait up to 90 seconds. If this fails, Telstra has urged customers to call from another phone.
Telstra’s chief financial officer, Michael Ackland, planned to speak to the media on Thursday morning.
The telco was fined more than $3 million in 2024 for an outage that prevented some customers from reaching Triple Zero.
The company faces potential penalties of tens of millions of dollars over Wednesday’s dismissals.
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