Updated ,first published
The Telstra outage that cut hundreds of people off from Triple Zero this week was likely to have been caused by a server that had reached the end of its supported life almost a decade ago and was never replaced, despite newer devices costing less than $30,000.
Company sources said the equipment that is believed internally to have caused the cascading failure was a device called a SyncServer S300, which is designed to set the time in a network. It stopped being manufactured around 2016.
The revelation that such an inexpensive and outdated piece of hardware was likely to have been key to the outage will pile pressure on Telstra to explain whether its cost cuts played a role in the disaster that left more than 600 people unable to contact emergency services.
At a press conference on Friday shortly after flying back from a family trip overseas, chief executive Vicki Brady apologised for the mass outages, as the Communications Minister Anika Wells vowed the government would hold the telco to account, saying it must now “face the music”.
“Like all Australians, I did not want or expect to be dealing with another mass outage so soon after the Optus incident,” Wells said. “It has been respected as the premium service. It is an iconic company. It has a rich history, but that trust really stands in peril today.”
Brady said Telstra had let customers down. “For that, I am deeply sorry,” she said. “We take trust in Triple Zero extremely seriously, and it’s our responsibility to do everything in our power to make sure calls are answered and transferred immediately.”
She said a company investigation would examine whether Telstra’s redundancy systems had worked as intended, and she reiterated that the telco was still looking at the initial cause of the system failure.
Telstra sources told this masthead that because the SyncServer devices are so old, they have limited capacity and can only count up to 1024 weeks, causing them to reset and go back in time about 20 years when they hit that limit if they are not patched first. That may have been what Telstra staff were attempting to do when the failure occurred on Wednesday morning. The problem quickly spread across the network as servers told each other the wrong time.
One former employee who spoke to this masthead on condition of anonymity accused the company of being aware of the problem for years but putting it into the “too hard” basket.
A current employee said: “They are blaming some random update but neglecting the fact the device is 10 years past its use-by date.
“This type of stuff is what happens when lifecycle management is not adhered to.”
Telstra was sent detailed questions but it did not respond before deadline. Industry sources said replacing a SyncServer years ago was estimated to cost about $US15,000 ($22,000) and newer models can now be bought for $US9,500. The network is likely to have many such servers, increasing the overall cost.
Telstra made $2.3 billion in profit last financial year and spent about $3.4 billion on capital works, by one measure.
At her press conference, Brady rejected suggestions that Telstra’s job cuts or outsourcing had contributed to the failure. “There is no indication that any restructuring of jobs has impacted on this particular issue,” she said, adding that the company’s “people and our processes worked as they should have”.
Wells, speaking in Canberra on Friday, said that as Telstra had now confirmed to the Triple Zero Custodian that the outage is resolved, attention could shift to the formal investigation into the company being conducted by the regulator.
She said none of the hundreds of welfare checks conducted on customers whose Triple Zero calls had failed had found someone who had died as a result.
Australian Communications and Media Authority deputy chair Adam Suckling said the agency was taking “with the utmost seriousness” its investigation into whether Telstra has complied with its legal obligations that can lead to civil penalties of up to $30 million if breached.
Brady’s address on Friday came after she ended her leave early and flew back to Australia. She wasn’t aware of the outage for several hours after it happened.
Telstra realised there was an outage about 4.30am on Wednesday. But Brady, who was overseas, said she wasn’t told until about 7am AEST by an employee whose own phone was not working and called via an internet application.
“I was contacted when it hit a certain threshold, and it was right around that time that we also then notified key stakeholders like the minister’s office and all of those key requirements,” she said. “Once it hit the right thresholds, all of the right parties were notified.”
Brady, who has run Telstra since 2022 and was paid a salary of $6.7 million in 2025, would not say whether executives would forgo bonuses over the outage, saying remuneration was governed by clear processes overseen by the board. Chief financial officer Michael Ackland said customers could apply for compensation by calling Telstra, but he did not explain who would qualify or offer blanket refunds.
A death in South Australia drew national attention after Liberal senator Kerrynne Liddle on Wednesday said an elderly person had died due to a Triple Zero failure. After initially saying the spouse of the deceased person tried and failed to connect to Triple Zero, police confirmed the man had not made a call. Instead, he asked a neighbour to call an ambulance, which arrived on time.
Liddle, whom Wells criticised on Friday, responded by saying her concerns were based on the information she had at the time. She noted police had also issued several updates.
“I spoke to the family and the daughter of the lady who passed away this afternoon,” she said. “They should now have peace and privacy.”
Two family members of the deceased woman said her elderly husband had told them he was unable to call relatives to be by the woman’s side in the hours leading up to her death.
“The outage did not affect the emergency response but it still did affect her death. Not being able to have family denied her a dignified death,” the family members said. Authorities are still looking at the man’s phone records to determine if he was affected by the outage.
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David Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.
Elias Visontay is a National Consumer Affairs Reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
Jack Gramenz is a breaking news reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
Paul Sakkal is Chief Political Correspondent. He previously covered Victorian politics and won a Walkley award and the 2025 Press Gallery Journalist of the Year. Contact him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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