Why Telecommunications Resilience Matters More Than Ever: Lessons from the Telstra Outage
A recent outage at Telstra, Australia's largest telecommunications provider, has caused disruption across the country’s critical services. Although the issue was largely resolved within 12 hours, the interruption to mobile voice and data services, caused by a software defect, caused a ripple effect that also disrupted transport networks, payment systems, freight operations and emergency communications.
The outage follows previous telecommunications failures in Australia, including a significant Optus outage in 2023 that affected emergency service access nationwide, and has prompted a regulatory investigation by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, demonstrating the increasing scrutiny being placed on operational resilience within critical national infrastructure providers.
Telecommunications failures remain a leading risk
Australia is not alone in facing telecommunications outages. Around the world, communications failures remain one of the most persistent and disruptive challenges confronting resilience professionals.
Recent events have highlighted the vulnerability of telecommunications services to both infrastructure and operational failures. In April 2025, a major power-system failure triggered a widespread blackout across Spain and Portugal, causing significant disruption to mobile and internet services and in February 2024, AT&T experienced a nationwide outage in the United States that affected more than 125 million devices, and disrupted emergency communications, including access to 911 services. More recently, in January 2026, global internet provider Hurricane Electric suffered a network outage affecting connectivity across several countries in North America and Asia.
BCI research[1] highlights the frequent nature of telecommunication failures. in 2025, telecommunications and internet service providers were the most common source of outages and supplier failures, affecting more than half of organizations. Just under half of organizations activated their emergency or crisis communications plan in response to an IT or telecommunications incident, and 20% did so following a critical infrastructure failure. [2]
These examples demonstrate how disruptions within core infrastructure can have widespread impacts and highlight telecommunications disruptions as one of the most significant operational risks facing organizations today.
What can practitioners do?
To strengthen resilience, organizations can regularly test their backup arrangements to ensure they perform as expected during a disruption, and ensure staff are frequently trained and exercised on the actions required when communication systems become unavailable. Maintaining up-to-date audits of critical communications dependencies, alternative channels, and manual workarounds can also help identify vulnerabilities before they lead to disruption.
Resilience practitioners worldwide can use incidents like Telstra’s outage to demonstrate the impact of telecommunications failure, and the cascading disruptions, across interconnected services to senior leaders, helping to secure support for investment in resilience measures and continuity planning.
The critical importance of planning for communications outage
This incident highlights that no telecommunications provider, regardless of size, is immune to software defects, system failures, or unexpected outages. However, many organizations have little choice but to depend on external telecoms providers, and their disruptions can have significant operational consequences.
While organizations cannot eliminate this risk, they can take steps to reduce their exposure to it. Understanding critical dependencies, testing alternative communication methods, maintaining manual workarounds, and regularly exercising response plans can help organizations continue operating when key services become unavailable.
Telstra’s outage serves as another reminder that resilience is not about preventing every disruption but ensuring that organizations are prepared to respond and recover when it occurs.
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About the author
Rebecca Mathews
Content Manager, The BCI
