A Senate inquiry into Telstraβs mass network outage last week will investigate whether any underinvestment in technology contributed to the disaster and it will push for a crackdown on an βuncheckedβ sector that has suffered multiple failures in the past two years.
Greens senator and inquiry chair Sarah Hanson-Young will interrogate Telstra executives on Friday about revelations published by this masthead that a device that had reached the end of its supported life nearly 10 years ago and could have cost less than $22,000 to replace was likely to have been the cause of the outage that blocked hundreds of Triple Zero calls.
βIt could have only cost them 20 grand? I mean, thatβs crazy if thatβs the truth,β Hanson-Young said. βIf this piece of equipment was a decade overdue for replacement, and it wasnβt replaced, what else is sitting in the system?
βAnd how can companies get away with this when they are delivering what is now an essential service? Itβs essential, critical infrastructure.β
The inquiry will look at three main areas: the cause of the outage, its impact on the Australian public and the broader economy, and whether the telecommunications industryβs self-regulation had been allowed to run βuncheckedβ.
A Telstra spokesperson said its internal investigation would cover what happened before, during and after the incident as well as future steps, but they pushed back against suggestions of further regulation and said mobile networks were βinherently complexβ that βno amount of regulation can removeβ.
βThe focus should be on getting the balance right. Overly prescriptive regulation can add cost and complexity, potentially reducing the investment, competition, innovation and network resilience that customers and communities rely on,β the spokesperson said.
βWe want to ensure we have a complete understanding of the facts before drawing conclusions, and weβll provide further technical details once that investigation is complete.β
Telstra reported profit of $2.3 billion last financial year off $23.6 billion in revenue. In the past eighteen months, the company has done multiple rounds of job cuts and price rises as chief executive Vicki Brady tries to wring more value for shareholders out of the company.
Hanson-Young called for customers, businesses and the NSW and Victorian rail networks crippled by the network to be compensated and she will question whether minimum service requirements should be imposed on the telco industry to bring it in line with the water and energy sectors.
βTheir objective is to make money for their shareholders, not to deliver the service, and thatβs whatβs got to change,β she said.
In their contracts, Telstra, Optus and other telcos largely exclude themselves from liability for βindirect, economic or consequential lossesβ caused by network outages. The exception is Triple Zero failures, where they are subject to penalties of up to $30 million per breach.
Hanson-Young said there were βserious questionsβ to be raised about whether Telstra could be trusted to operate the Triple Zero service, which the federal government has contracted the company to run, and whether it should be handed to public ownership. The contract is up for review.
βThe Triple Zero system and service is seen as a chore to these big telcos, and thatβs not good enough.β
The Senate inquiry is the third to be called into the nationwide failure that Telstra detected about 4.30am last Wednesday. The company is conducting an internal investigation and the regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, has called its own.
Hanson-Young will call the authority and the Department of Communications, overseen by minister Anika Wells, to give evidence to the inquiry.
She described Telstra, which has over 25 million customers, as βeffectively a monopolyβ and said Australians were worried about emergency services being βat the whim of corporate profitsβ.
Hanson-Young said there were βplenty of warning signsβ about the stability of the telecommunication networks after Optusβ major outage in 2023 was followed by the Triple Zero disaster caused by a scheduled upgrade that resulted in four deaths.
Brady cut her leave short and returned to Australia to apologise to Australians for the mass outage on Friday.
ACMA and the Department of Communications did not respond to requests for comment.
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Jessica Yun is a business reporter covering retail and food for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.