TELSTRA OUTAGE SPREADS: EMERGENCY CALLS DOWN

The Australian telecommunications carrier confirmed that the ongoing technical issue continued to block emergency calls on Thursday morning, a day after the first widespread outage struck the network. Customers attempting to contact the emergency hotline experienced connection failures. Telstra acknowledged the secondary problem was directly linked to Wednesday's initial outage, which had already disrupted millions of users nationwide. Beyond emergency services, the cascading failures extended to regional rail networks, leaving trains stranded and passengers stranded without transportation. Train operators had been unable to operate services dependent on Telstra's network infrastructure. The carrier did not provide a timeline for full service restoration. The dual outages highlighted the reliance of critical infrastructure—including emergency response systems—on telecommunications networks, raising questions about backup protocols and system redundancy at the national level.