Outrage over Telstra’s outage is mounting as the telco’s head returns from overseas amid scrutiny of executive performance and pay.
Caused by an early morning software glitch controlling timers, the widespread network disruption hit transport, businesses, emergency services and healthcare.
There are also fears of a possible fatality in South Australia which is under investigation by the police.
Telstra’s chief Vicki Brady is expected to answer questions about the network failure after returning from leave overseas, as public scrutiny of the company shifts towards accountability.
Former Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan was critical of the telecommunications giant’s corporate leadership saying they needed to be financially penalised.
“There’s no question the bonuses of all the executives will be on the line,” he told Nine’s Today program.
“I’m sure the public will want to see a fair bit of accountability.”
Telstra sacked more than 100 people and merged two of its biggest technology divisions in May in a restructure, but Chief Finance Officer Michael Ackland dismissed links to the network’s systems on July 9.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong also blamed the telco for failing to shore up its systems that had a knock-on effect impacting critical infrastructure.
“Everyone would agree that Telstra’s performance through this has not been where the community expect it to be ... when it comes, particularly to the emergency network,” she told Nine’s Today on July 10.
“I want to make it very clear it’s not acceptable that people can’t get through on the triple zero line.”
When asked if bonuses for executives and directors needed to be reviewed, the minister repeated her assertion that the public deserved better from the telco.
The outage was largely resolved by late July 8 and a solution for a separate “secondary issue” that prevented some users making triple-zero calls was in place by the afternoon of July 9.
The overwhelming majority of the 639 welfare checks conducted by Telstra had taken place with no adverse outcomes reported, Communications Minister Anika Wells said on the night of July 9.
But South Australian Liberal Senator Kerrynne Liddle said her office received a report an elderly woman had died during July 8’s outage.
South Australia Police said it had repeatedly attempted to contact Senator Liddle for information regarding the report without success.
The force later confirmed an individual died at a regional hospital on July 8 but police had not been notified of the death with an investigation launched into the circumstances.
It is the third major national outage in less than a year for the $56 billion (US$38.9 billion) giant, which powers about 25 million Australian mobile services.
