Telstra has admitted it knew of the dangers of a failure of its time systems and is now investigating why backup measures failed to stop this week's outage, as its chief executive says she's 'deeply sorry' about its impacts.
According to a statement from Telstra, the outage occurred on July 8, 2026, affecting mobile and internet services across parts of Australia, particularly South Australia. The company confirmed that the root cause was a failure in its network timing systems, which synchronize data transmission.
CEO Vicki Brady expressed regret, stating, 'We are deeply sorry for the disruption this has caused our customers.' She added that the company had prior knowledge of potential risks but backup systems did not activate as expected.
Telstra is conducting a full review to prevent future occurrences. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has been notified and may investigate further.
