Telstra blames ‘software defect’ for major outage that hit mobiles, trains and triple-zero calls

Telco said outage was not due to a cyber-attack but warned of scammers calling people claiming to be from Telstra Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Telstra has blamed a “software defect” that changed the time servers for a major outage in which thousands of mobile customers were unable to make calls or access data on the country’s largest network on Wednesday morning. The telco, which powers about 25m mobile services nationwide, confirmed the outage on Wednesday, with all services restored by 4pm AEST. Telstra’s chief financial officer, Michael Ackland, who has been acting chief executive while Vicki Brady is on leave, said the outage began at 4.30am AEST, and was an intermittent issue affecting calls and data services. He said there was no indication it was the result of malicious activity, but the company did not know exactly what caused the issue. “The issue is impacting a number of nodes within our network that keep time across the mobile network,” Ackland told reporters. “And when these nodes are not operating as expected, which is what has occurred, other parts of the network can be affected, resulting in intermittent issues with some m