260710 ABC News Channel 4PM — Telstra Outage

Speaker 2: Now, South Australian police have also confirmed today that a report suggesting there was a failed call to 000 due to the Telstra outage that ended in a death are incorrect. Speaker 2: On Wednesday night, Liberal Senator Karen Little posted on social media claiming her office had received a report of a death following an apparent failure to connect to Triple Zero. Speaker 2: She stated an elderly South Australian person had died. Speaker 2: But today, South Australian Police Commissioner Grant Stevens says a thorough investigation has been carried out, and it found that calls made to Triple Zero using a Telstra mobile phone for this particular family did connect, and an ambulance was requested. Speaker 1: This is a tragedy where a family has lost a loved one. Speaker 1: And in the ordinary course of events, they would not have had such significant involvement with the South Australia police, and they would not, this particular person's passing would not have been the subject of such significant scrutiny. Speaker 2: You’ve today reported that Telstra was repeatedly warned by government agencies about this sort of outage occurring. Speaker 2: What exactly were they told? Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s right. Speaker 1: So Telstra, in the years and months leading up to this week's outage, was told that the system that suffered the fault this week was vulnerable to a kind of error like this that could cause some massive issues for the telco. Speaker 1: The system at hand, the one that we’re talking about that’s been identified by Telstra, is its timing system and its dependency on GPS satellites. Speaker 1: Most people think of GPS, they think of location, but another really important function that they serve is also telling the time very accurately to computers all around the world that are used in a lot of infrastructure, including telecommunications. Speaker 1: So, for example, telecommunication networks use this very specific timing to be able to coordinate when one cell tower talks and the other one listens, and also as part of their security, because when a cell tower receives a signal and that it believes it is from another cell tower, the way that it figures out if that's a legitimately from a cell tower, not someone else trying to interfere, is it looks at a security certificate, which is essentially a way of knowing that the signal comes from who it says it is. Speaker 1: That depends on also the time as well. Speaker 2: So when you had the error that happened this week, which reportedly convinced Telstra systems that it wasn’t 2026 but actually 2006, that caused this error, it messed up with these settings that caused the problems cascading across the network. Speaker 2: Now, um, this is something that had been brought up by a government agency, the federal government's critical infrastructure security agency and experts directly to Telstra this year. Speaker 2: And Vicky Brady was asked about uh this reporting today. Speaker 2: Well, I think we need to get underneath exactly what was part of that conversation as I understand it right now. Speaker 2: It was a broad range of things um spoken about, and as I Speaker 2: mentioned, these timing synchronization systems are well known to be critical to a mobile network so now Speaker 2: Cam you mention Australia's government run cyber and infrastructure security centre repeatedly raised timekeeping as a major concern for critical infrastructure providers so aside from raising the issue can the government actually compel or force telcos to act on such a concern Speaker 2: agency that put out those awards is not one that has the powers to do anything but Telstra as a company and a telecommunications provider that has obligations under legislation and rules for critical infrastructure in Australia could be asked to do certain kinds of things. Speaker 2: There was a new rule brought in last year that requires these networks to prepare for all kind of potential hazards to the network presumably having some kind of backup for the the timekeeping system that was affected by this error or just generally having a kind of ability to test and have a resilience when there are issues to its timing system altogether the act also gives the minister in the the the federal government's critical infrastructure security agency and experts directly to Telstra this year. Speaker 2: Now, um, this is something that had been brought up by a government agency, the federal government’s critical infrastructure security center repeatedly raised timekeeping as a major concern for critical infrastructure providers so aside from raising the issue can the government actually compel or force telcos to act on such a concern Speaker 1: agency that put out those awards is not one that has the powers to do anything but Telstra as a company and a telecommunications provider that has obligations under legislation and rules for critical infrastructure in Australia could be asked to do certain kinds of things. Speaker 1: There was a new rule brought in last year that requires these networks to prepare for all kind of potential hazards to the network presumably having some kind of backup for the the timekeeping system that was affected by this error or just generally having a kind of ability to test and have a resilience when there are issues to its timing system altogether the act also gives the minister in the the federal government's critical infrastructure security agency and experts directly to Telstra this year. Speaker 2: Cam Wilson thank you for your time. Speaker 1: Thank you.