Telstra outage triggers chaos; Trump says Iran deal ‘over’; Sydney, Melbourne liveable cities
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to Fear and Greed, business news you can use. Today, a broken timer in Telstra's system creates a nationwide outage, highlighting Australia's vulnerability to tech glitches. Donald Trump says the deal to end the war with Iran is over. And Sydney and Melbourne ranked in the top five of the world's most livable cities. Plus, the Reserve Bank chief economist warns of a period of higher unemployment and rents across the nation rise by their most in two years. It is Thursday, the 9th of July, 2026. I'm Michael Thompson and good morning, Sean Aylmer. Good morning, Michael. The main story this morning, 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. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the outage unacceptable and disruptive and said that Telstra needs to explain what happened.
What caused the nationwide Telstra outage and how many services were affected?
In a case, really, of pretty unlucky timing, Telstra CEO Vicky Brady was on annual leave. She has cut that trip short and is heading home, but CFO Michael Ackland had to face the music yesterday instead. He said that the Telstra system was big and complex and from time to time issues do occur. He also said there was nothing to indicate that the outage was caused by malicious activity. Telstra's share price closed down 3% yesterday.
So Telstra is the country's biggest telco.
How did the Telstra outage impact emergency services and trigger welfare checks?
It powers about 25 million mobile services nationwide. The outage affected phones and the internet, so had a huge spin-on effect to all sorts of businesses and private users. There's been a run of telco outages recently. In June, Vodafone customers were left with intermittent reception and data issues across the country. In September last year, two deaths were linked to an outage at Optus, which lasted almost 14 hours and affected hundreds of calls in four states and territories. That was about a firewall upgrade going wrong. Optus previously had been fined $12 million over a 2023 outage. In March this year, the Australian Communications and Media Authority introduced new rules requiring telcos to publish when an outage started and when it was restored in detail as well as the cause.
Now, these new rules replaced an industry self-written consumer code and is part of the process of the government trying to do more to hold telcos to account.
Yeah. The thing that struck me yesterday, Sean, was just how quickly this became political, really. And it was unions and pollies, everybody getting in on the action, right? Opposition leader Angus Taylor called on the government to explain. the outage and said it was understandable for Australians to question whether China's missile test from earlier in the week was linked to the network disruption. That idea had actually been floated earlier in the day. I think it was by Barnaby Joyce was the first one to suggest that. And then We had Communications Workers Union, CWU National Secretary Shane Murphy.
What explanations and political reactions followed Telstra’s system failure?
He said that Telstra is sacking of hundreds of its workforce over the past 12 months. That was a contributing factor to the chaos. There's a lot of opinions yesterday.
I know, but sorry, the whole idea that a China missile test was linked to network disruption? Am I missing something here? Is that not totally ridiculous?
Tin whistle politics? Yeah, I think that's probably the best way to put it. It does feel like it stretches things and probably preys a little bit on some heightened sensitivities around diplomatic relations between China and Australia at the moment.
I think you're being very diplomatic on that one, Michael. I'm doing my best, Sean. The reality is outages will occur across any network. It's how much it affects everyday life, particularly triple zero calls, that really matters. We only have three main carriers, Telstra, Optus and TBG, which runs Vodafone. you're increasing the chances of a single disruption hurting lots of people when you only have three carriers.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:06–1:16
2
What caused the nationwide Telstra outage and how many services were affected?
1:16–1:49
3
How did the Telstra outage impact emergency services and trigger welfare checks?
1:49–3:30
4
What explanations and political reactions followed Telstra’s system failure?
3:30–9:10
5
Why are telco outages becoming more visible and what regulatory changes were introduced?
9:10–16:38
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from FEAR & GREED | Business News
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