Telstra NSW outage impacts state’s regional trains, Triple Zero service

Tens of thousands of Telstra customers around NSW have been unable to make calls, including to Triple Zero, as an outage causes significant delays on regional trains and some businesses face payment issues.

NSW Police said its Triple Zero systems were not affected on Wednesday morning but warned that people may not be able to reach Triple Zero if calling from a Telstra device.

“If you try to call Triple Zero and can’t get through, we recommend using another device, a landline or Wi-Fi calling,” they said.

By 9.45am, Telstra said it had made good progress on restoring services, with about 90 per cent of calls and data going through the network.

“Our teams are working as quickly as possible to restore remaining services and get all customers back online,” a Telstra spokesperson said in a statement.

“We know how much our customers rely on our network and understand just how much of a disruption this is to your day. For that, we’re so sorry.”

Telstra’s chief financial officer, Michael Ackland, said the issue was affecting “a number of nodes within our network that keep time”.

“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.

“Customers who are having trouble making a call, I encourage you to try again, and depending on how the call is routed through the network, it may connect successfully on another attempt, and people are seeing that occur.”

The telco had also been conducting welfare checks when calls to Triple Zero failed, Ackland said.

The cause of the issue is not fully known as yet, but so far, nothing indicated “malicious activity”, he said.

Outside the Telstra store in North Sydney, Rick Miller, 62, was looking for answers after his wife had been unable to contact their son, who was in Brisbane to watch the State of Origin decider.

“She doesn’t know what’s happening with him, so she’s up me big time to come down here to see what’s happening,” Miller said.

But Miller was able to use eftpos to buy a coffee at his usual cafe up the street. Others weren’t as lucky as small businesses switched between payment machines and offered Pay ID transfers.

Payments provider Tyro said it was aware that some customers were unable to connect to the 4G network to process transactions.

“While the issue is outside Tyro’s control, we are actively monitoring the situation and are advising affected customers to connect via ethernet or Wi-Fi where available until service is restored,” a Tyro spokesperson said.

Cronulla local Mia Turney runs 10 kilometres with her friends before work three times a week, and expected Wednesday to be a day like any other. But the 25-year-old noticed a problem with her phone as soon as she got up.

“We woke up this morning at 7am to go on our run, and none of us were getting each other’s messages. So we all just rocked up at the cafe we usually meet at and hoped for the best,” she said.

“We just sat and had coffee, and talked about how annoying it was that we didn’t have service.”

Turney, who does not have Wi-Fi at home and only uses mobile data, said the outage was a major inconvenience as she couldn’t check her phone for important messages or anything she had missed overnight.

“It felt like the old times, we just had to stick to the meeting time, get the paper map out.”

However, she hoped it was a one-off incident and wouldn’t consider swapping providers.

Buses eventually replaced regional NSW trains that were out of action due to the Telstra outage, including on the Hunter and Southern Highlands lines.

Suburban Sydney Trains, Opal payments and Metro services were unaffected.

“We are monitoring impacts to regional rail services, with some NSW TrainLink services, including the Melbourne XPT, experiencing delays due to telecommunications-related issues,” a Transport for NSW spokesperson said in a statement.

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