Major outage hits Telstra mobile network as thousands report they can’t make calls or access internet

Telstra customers have been unable to make calls or access data on their mobiles on the country’s largest network, in a national outage that has also shut down Victoria’s regional trains.

The telecommunications provider that powers about 25 million mobile services nationwide confirmed the outage on Wednesday.

“We’re looking into an issue affecting some mobile calls and data connections,” Telstra said on social media.

“We’re on it and will share an update as soon as it’s fixed. Thanks for bearing with us.”

Telstra asked users to try restarting their devices as a potential, temporary fix.

More than 7,500 customers reported the network disturbance on online monitoring platform Downdetector, starting around 4am.

All of Victoria’s regional train services have been suspended as a result of radio network issues, which the operator said were caused by the Telstra outage.

Victoria’s V/Line said services were “unable to operate” with no estimated time for rectification.

Some regional commuters in New South Wales were also facing disruptions after two train routes went down due to an “external telecommunication issue”, which the operator confirmed was the Telstra outage.

Transport NSW said trains were not running between Campbelltown and Moss Vale/Goulburn on the Southern Highlands Line, and there were no trains running between Newcastle Interchange and Maitland.

Replacement buses were being organised.

WA police said the Telstra outage was affecting calls to triple zero and advised people to offer support to vulnerable family members.

The Telstra outage comes after other telecommunications giants Vodafone and Optus experienced problems.

In June, Vodafone customers were left with intermittent reception and data issues across Australia.

The carrier said customers who could not access the network were able to use emergency triple zero by connecting to other available mobile networks.

Two deaths have been linked to an outage at Optus in September 2025, which lasted almost 14 hours and affected hundreds of calls in four states and territories.

New rules were handed down by the Australian Communications and Media Authority in March requiring telcos to publish when an outage started and when it was restored in detail, as well as the cause.