Nationwide Telstra Outage Hits Australia

The outage crippled Eftpos machines, forced trains to stop, and left many unable to call emergency services, sparking a political blame game.

Regional Victorian trains resumed slowly after the network was restored, while police investigated a death that may be linked to the outage.

The economic cost was estimated to run into hundreds of millions of dollars, and experts called for a more resilient digital infrastructure.

Telstra’s chief financial officer apologised, but the government faced criticism for the second major telecom breakdown in 12 months.