A broken timer in two of Telstra’s data centres triggered a nationwide outage yesterday morning, leading to the failure of Triple Zero calls. 333 welfare checks were undertaken following the failure, while networks from the east coast to the west coast were affected for about six hours from 4:30am.
PM Anthony Albanese called the outage unacceptable and disruptive, and said Telstra needs to explain what happened.
In a case of unlucky timing, Telstra CEO Vicki Brady was on annual leave, and while she has cut her overseas trip short, yesterday CFO Michael Ackland had to face the music. He said the Telstra system was big and complex and from time to time, issues occur.
He also said there was nothing to indicate the outage was caused by malicious activity. Telstra’s share price closed down three per cent.
SpaceX has joined the Nasdaq 100 index, and as Bloomberg reports, analysts at big global brokers are setting some lofty price targets for the company's shares.
Fear & Greed Q+A today
For decades we've searched online ourselves. The next step? Letting AI do the shopping for us - which means businesses need to be getting ready now:
“People think AI will make shopping less personal, but because these models can ingest so much more data, including behavioural data, there's actually an opportunity to personalise interactions much more deeply.
If you've walked past a coffee shop before, if you've visited in the past, if you've got your phone in your hand, there's an opportunity to serve you an offer that encourages you to come in.
The idea that you can personalise the interaction with consumers down to certain behavioural segments is going to allow the agentic commerce world to feel more personal rather than less personal.
It's really a programmable interaction with the consumer.”
US President Donald Trump last night said an interim agreement to end the war with Iran was “over” after Tehran carried out new attacks on US bases in the Gulf.
Reserve Bank chief economist Sarah Hunter believes Australia may need a period of “higher unemployment” to nullify inflation expectations, explaining that the drop in the unemployment rate to 3.5 per cent after the pandemic had contributed to a “sharp pick-up in inflation”.
Rents have risen by their most in two years, although conditions are diverging across the country, with increases in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra and Darwin, but some easing in Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Hobart.
Unions have launched industrial action in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, hitting mining giant BHP and potentially crippling the world’s largest iron ore loading port.
Melbourne and Sydney are both among the top five cities in the world to live in, but number one spot goes to Copenhagen, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's latest Global Liveability Index. Adelaide also makes the top ten.
Fear-o-meter
It didn’t take long for unions and pollies to make the Telstra outage political. Opposition leader Angus Taylor called on the government to explain what happened said it was understandable for Australians to question whether China’s missile test was linked to the network disruption. That (ridiculous) idea had been floated earlier in the day by Barnaby Joyce.
Communication Workers Union national secretary Shane Murphy said Telstra’s sacking of hundreds of its workforce over the past 12 months contributed to the chaos.
The reality is that outages will occur across any network. It’s how much that affects everyday life, particularly Triple Zero calls, that matter.
When you only have three main carriers, Telstra, Optus and TPG which runs Vodafone, you are increasing the chances of a single disruption hurting lots of people. And Australia’s network is nationwide, not regional as in more populous countries like the US. So, if something goes wrong in Melbourne, Perth residents can feel the impact.
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