Telstra reveals secondary issue with network after thousands were blacked out in nationwide outage

Telstra has revealed a second issue was also stopping customers from connecting to triple-0 during Wednesday’s outage.

Telstra Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland said the second issue — which “only became apparent as (Telstra) resolved the original issue” — meant some people were receiving error messages when calling emergency services.

“In these cases, when calling triple-0, some people received an error message, and then their phone would go and try to connect to an alternative mobile network, as it should,” Mr Ackland told media Thursday morning.

“While we while we addressed the original issue, that subsequent issue remained ongoing and needed to be addressed in a different way.

“Overnight, our teams made good progress, significantly reducing the occurrence of failed calls to triple-0, and we’ve now implemented a solution that has addressed the impact of this issue.”

Mr Ackland confirmed more than 600 customers were subject to welfare checks because of failed calls to triple-0.

“230 callers advised by sms responded that no assistance was required, 402 cases required follow-up voice calls, of those 402 cases, 170 calls were passed to the police for either further welfare check or assistance, and we had seven callers advised that they needed assistance in total, and their details were referred to the relevant emergency services organisations at that time.”

His media appearance came just hours after the company revealed customers were still having issues calling triple-0.

In a statement at the time, it said 90 per cent of triple-0 calls were working but teams were working to “eliminate this issue entirely”.

“Our welfare checks process remains in place, and we continue to advise customers who experience the issue to wait for the call to be connected via an alternative network or recall using a different phone,” the statement read.

WA Police on Thursday said a total of three calls had failed to reach triple-0 in WA as a result of Telstra outage, before they were all deemed accidental.

“WA Police have conducted three welfare checks during the outage, with two calls originating from the same subscriber,” a spokeswoman said.

“The welfare checks established that the calls were accidental and that the callers did not require emergency assistance.

“If you have a vulnerable family member, friend, neighbour or co-worker, consider checking on them and offering support during the service disruption.

“If you are affected and do not have access to an alternative mobile or landline service, WA Police recommend making arrangements with a neighbour, family member, or friend so you can access a working telephone in an emergency.”

Police around the country have been requested to conduct welfare checks after Telstra were unable to reach their customers who failed to connect with emergency services.

Thousands of customers were cut off when the network went dark about 2am (WA time) across the country on Wednesday.

West Australians were continuing to report outage issues at 5.30pm, more than 12 hours after the telco’s problem was first realised.

Addressing media Wednesday afternoon, Telstra Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland said an issue with the timing of network nodes were to blame, but the root cause had not been determined.

Telstra is now recommending that customers still having issues calling triple-0 either wait for their phone to connect to an alternative network if one is available, which can take up to 90 seconds, or use a different phone to make the call.