Thursday, 9 July, 2026
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SPORT
Time to embrace To the drones of a yidaki, world-renowned Djarlo Dance Group thrilled a crowd on Royal Botanic Gardens Cranbourne’s lawns as part of a three-day NAIDOC Week celebration. MORE PAGES PAGE 12
The Djarlo Dance Group form a formidable line at the NAIDOC Week festival on 8 July. (Gary Sissons: 564167)
Outage hits hard By Afraa Kori
LOCATIONS PAKENHAM, WARRAGUL, LEONGATHA, MOE
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Low Dose CT, Digital X-ray, Comprehensive Ultrasound Dental X-ray, Dexa or Bone Densitometry, Echocardiogram
alternative transport. Telstra apologised for the disruption, acknowledging customers relied heavily on its network. “We’re looking into an issue affecting some mobile calls and data connections,” the statement reads. “We’ve made good progress restoring services, with around 90 per cent of calls and data now flowing successfully across the network. “Our teams are working as quickly as possible to restore remaining services and get all customers back online.” Telstra chief financial officer Michael Ackland told reporters there was no evidence of malicious activity or human error behind the outage. “We have nothing to indicate malicious activity,” he said. “At this stage, we do not know what the
root cause was. “We’ve been in contact with all regulators and government agencies to that effect, but we continue to investigate. We continue to remain curious and explore every avenue.” He said the issue appeared to involve network infrastructure connected to Telstra’s data centres in Sydney and Melbourne. While there is no estimated time for rectification, Mr Ackland said their priority was restoring services before considering whether compensation would be offered to affected customers. He also stressed that emergency 000 calls use different network settings and were not impacted in the same way as standard mobile calls, although the company was investigating a small number of reported issues and conducting welfare checks where required.
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Local users were among thousands of customers caught up in a nationwide Telstra outage, with mobile calls and data services disrupted across Victoria. The outage, which began about 4.30am on Wednesday July 8, affected users of mobile providers that operate on Telstra’s network, including Boost, Belong, Aldi and Everyday Mobile. Many customers reported their phones displaying “SOS” or “Emergency calls only”, leaving them unable to make calls, text or access mobile data. Local resident Savannah Studd said she “woke up without data” about 7.30am and “still no data at all”. “It’s also affecting travel because I need to look up train times, as well as Vline being fully down
from the outage,” she said. Amanda Cunningham said she had a signal near her local tower in Narre Warren South, but lost service once she travelled out of range. “At Beaconsfield we were luckily able to pay using EFTPOS to get our dogs out of the kennels, even though they use Telstra,” she said. Terry Hickey said he was unable to use EFTPOS and was forced to rely on cash payments. Fortunately some customers reported no issues at all, while others reported that restarting their phone restored service. The Telstra outage temporarily halted V/Line services across Victoria, with replacement coaches arranged where possible. Metro Trains services remained largely unaffected apart from the Stony Point Line. Passengers were advised to expect delays and consider
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