Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady has apologised to the company’s customers, saying the telco let them down and that investigations into the cause of Wednesday’s outage are continuing.
In her first public appearance since the outage that affected Triple-Zero networks, trains and eftpos payments across the country — and has left the company open to potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation claims — Ms Brady explained the outage, which was due to a software glitch, was now under control.
Ms Brady was overseas with her family when the outage occurred but said she had returned as quickly as possible when she learned of the crisis that engulfed the company for days.
She had been in contact with Communications Minister Anika Wells throughout the incident and had also spoken with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this morning “to provide him with an update directly”.
“We have let our customers and Australians down and for that I am deeply sorry,”
Ms Brady said.
“I understand how much Australians rely on us to keep in touch, to work and stay safe. I also understand the broader impact on the community when services go down, from things like payments to transport.
“It’s extremely frustrating and disruptive when services aren’t available, and I am sorry for the impact that this has had on so many people.”
She said the telco took people’s trust in the system, which had been impacted by an inability to dial Triple Zero, “extremely seriously, and it’s our responsibility to do everything in our power to make sure calls are answered and transferred immediately”.
“We understand what caused the issue, and we will complete our investigation into the actions needed to prevent it from happening again,”
she said.
“You have my commitment on that.”
She said while Triple Zero was critical, “unfortunately, networks are complex and there will be issues”.
“We need to do everything we can to try and minimise those issues. But when they do happen, we must have the processes in place to back that up.
“And in this case, those processes worked. Calls did camp on, where there were mobile other mobile networks available, and we did conduct our welfare checks in a timely manner.”
Ms Brady was asked whether she and other executives would voluntarily offer to surrender pay bonuses, given this happened under their watch.
“We again have very clear processes and governance when it comes to bonuses and remuneration,” she said.
“That process will happen and it will be overseen by our board.”
Claim woman’s death caused by outage ‘incorrect’, police say
The South Australian police chief said there was “nothing to suggest” the death of a person in a regional hospital was caused by any failure to connect to Triple Zero (000) during the Telstra outage, following an investigation into the matter.
On Friday Commissioner Grant Stevens provided extra details about the woman’s death after the telco said it had no record of Triple Zero calls made from phone numbers associated with the address of a person who died in a regional hospital on Wednesday.
The matter was raised on Wednesday night on social media by senator Kerrynne Liddle, but on Friday afternoon police said it was “incorrect” to suggest a death had occurred as a result of a failed connection to Triple Zero during the outage.
Commissioner Stevens said a woman was found unresponsive by her partner at 10am on Wednesday July 8, and that her partner phoned a neighbour, who had a medical background, using his Telstra phone.
SA Police Commissioner Grant Stevens says police have investigated the matter.
He said the neighbour attended “immediately” and “assessed the woman”.
Commissioner Stevens said the neighbour then used “her Telstra phone to contact Triple Zero to arrange for an ambulance”.
“Both of those calls went through without any difficulty,” he said.
“The woman was then conveyed to a local hospital where she later passed away.”
In a statement on Friday afternoon Senator Liddle said the concerns raised were based on information available at the time.
“SAPOL has acknowledged this was a complicated matter and the information provided by the Police Commissioner differed from statements made publicly earlier in the day,” she said.
“There remains serious questions about Telstra’s nationwide outage and the failure of Triple Zero and that must be investigated properly.”
Senator Liddle said she had spoken with the family of the woman on Friday.
“To the family who have lost a loved one, I offer my sincere apologies for what you have been through and for any confusion to the broader community,” she said.
Telco apologises to family
Ms Brady said she had spoken with and apologised to the family of the person in South Australia.
A Telstra spokesperson said while there were “no active outages affecting the local area at that time”, an “intermittent issue” had affected some voice and data services at that location.
“That issue prevented family members from being informed that their loved one was being taken to hospital and meant they did not have the opportunity to go to the hospital before their loved one passed,” the spokesperson said.
“We extend our sincere apologies to the family for the role we have played in making a distressing day even worse for them.”
Brady couldn’t do a Teams call because of the telco’s own outage
Ms Brady said she first became aware of the outage about 7am Sydney time Wednesday, which was the evening in Europe where she was.
She says the outage began at 4:20am and that Telstra teams were aware of the problem and working on it within minutes.
“It wasn’t that this event had happened, and no-one was aware of it,” she said.
“Our teams were absolutely working on it from the very early hours of Wednesday morning. I was contacted when it hit a certain threshold.
“And it was right around that time that we also then notified key stakeholders like the minister’s office and all of those key requirements.”
She said all their processes worked and Michael Ackland had clear delegation.
“We will conduct very thorough investigations and one of our focus areas will be what are the lessons out of this? Are there changes we need to make?” Ms Brady said.
Outage due to software glitch
Ms Brady said the incident started with a “software issue” when a human was working on the system.
“We know that this particular node did restart as work was happening on it, and as it restarted a software glitch was triggered,” she said.
“It is not unusual in a network of our size, as you’re doing work on various components of it, you will have equipment restart”.
Ms Brady said normally “you should be able to restart” but that, “In this case, it triggered this software issue.”
“We are in a position where we are monitoring even more closely all of the components of the network where this issue did occur.
“We are confident right now that issue has been resolved.”
She said there were a small number of the telco’s enterprise customers that “have more sophisticated solutions” where there will need to be field visits to reset devices.
Telstra CEO responds to calls for her bonus to be docked
Asked about recent job losses at the company and whether that could have led to the national outage and the SA death, Ms Brady said: “There is no indication that any restructuring of jobs has impacted on this particular issue.”
“We invest significant money into resilience of our network, but networks are complex and they’re not infallible,” she said.
“Obviously it is unacceptable, and any time we impact our customers, you know, that’s not something we aim to do. And I’m very sorry for the disruption this has caused to so many people. We will need to get underneath exactly what caused it, and then make sure we take the appropriate steps.”
She said the company had “clear processes from here when it comes to accountability”.
“I’m the CEO, and so it absolutely starts with me,”
she said.
Asked whether people would receive compensation for losses suffered during the outage, Mr Ackland said they would deal with complaints on a “case by case basis”.
“I would encourage customers to reach out and contact their account managers, the people that they work with in Telstra and call directly,” he said.
“We will be doing everything we can to resolve those.”
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