Major Telstra outage paralysed Australia while the opposition fumbled its own communications

A widespread Telstra network outage on Wednesday cut phone connections for millions of Australians for several hours, halting trains, knocking out Eftpos terminals and causing hundreds of triple-zero emergency calls to fail. While the government faced questions about telco regulation, opposition leader Angus Taylor was himself under fire over his own team's separate communications failures, undermining his ability to press the government.

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He should be upping pressure on the government over the second major telco breakdown in 12 months, but Angus Taylor can’t stop scoring own goals

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As 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.

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Major Telstra outage paralysed Australia while the opposition fumbled its own communications

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