Telstra's massive outage has left millions of Australians without phone connections for hours, sparking concerns over the government's regulation of the telecommunications sector. The incident, which also disrupted train services, Eftpos transactions, and critical triple zero calls, has raised questions about whether the government has learned from last year's devastating Optus outage and implemented sufficient changes to prevent such failures. However, opposition leader Angus Taylor has found himself on the back foot after being questioned about his own communication failures, including those of his ministerial team. With the government under scrutiny, it remains to be seen whether they will take decisive action to address the issues plaguing the critical telecommunications sector.
Angus Taylor should be heaping pressure on the government over the second major telco breakdown in 12 months, but he can’t stop scoring own goalsFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAs the government was being questioned over the regulation of telcos and the latest massive Telstra outage, the opposition leader, Angus Taylor, was being asked about communications failures of a different kind: his own, and those of his ministerial team.Millions of phone connections around the country went out for hours on Wednesday. Trains ground to a halt, Eftpos transactions went blank, hundreds of triple zero calls failed and welfare checks were being urgently carried out. The bulk of the fault lies with Telstra. But there are important questions to answer about whether the critical telecommunications sector is being appropriately regulated, and whether the government has learned from last year’s devastating Optus outage and made the necessary changes. Continue reading...
