On Wednesday morning, Telstra’s mobile network suffered a major outage, leaving thousands of Australians unable to make phone calls or access data.

According to the company, a “software defect” impacting time synchronisation across the network was to blame, with no sign it was the result of a cyberattack.

At 4pm on Wednesday, Telstra said the issue had been “mostly resolved”. But the company later acknowledged some ongoing issues, as well as a “secondary issue” impacting Triple Zero calls that has now been fixed.

In today’s world, a major mobile network outage can mean far more than being unable to make calls (including emergency calls). There were disruptions reported across payment systems, public transport, electric vehicle charging and more.

While it’s far too early to count the economic cost of this outage, this incident reminds us that mobile networks are more than a convenience; they’re part of the foundational infrastructure of the modern economy.

The most important lesson is not to slow digitalisation, but to make it more resilient.

Mobile networks are economic infrastructure

Disruptions were........

© The Conversation