‘Begs the question’: $2.3bn fury over Telstra outage
Telstra is facing intense scrutiny and a Senate inquiry following a massive 12-hour nationwide outage that disrupted emergency services. Critics are questioning how the company can report multi-billion dollar profits while failing to maintain critical infrastructure.
Why it matters
The incident raises significant concerns regarding corporate accountability and the reliability of essential telecommunications infrastructure during emergencies.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has questioned how Telstra could bank $2.3bn in profit. Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has questioned how Telstra could bank $2.3bn in profit last year but "not keep its equipment up to date", as questions swirl about the cause of a massive outage which hit triple-0 services.
The nationwide outage impacted customers across Australia for about 12 hours last week in the latest high-profile failure from the country's major telecom providers.
Two deaths were previously linked to an outage at Optus last year that also impacted triple-0 services.
Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady, who was on holiday when the outage began, said the problem was caused by a software fault in Telstra's time-telling systems.
A full investigation will be undertaken by the telco.
In a post, Ms Brady said Telstra was "sorry we let you down".
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