‘She got on the first plane’: Telstra defends response as CEO returns from leave
Telstra CFO Michael Ackland has been forced to defend the whereabouts of the telco’s CEO after the network was hit by an outage that impacted Triple Zero calls, train lines and payment platforms.
Delivering an update on the outage on Thursday afternoon, Ackland said Telstra CEO Vicki Brady, who is overseas on annual leave, is “making her way back home”.
Telstra CFO Michael Ackland has defended the telco’s CEO at a press conference today. 9News
Telstra CEO Vicki Brady in her office in Sydney on November 22. Dominic Lorrimer
“She got on the first plane. She immediately changed her plans and she will be back here as as soon as as she possibly can,” he said.
When asked for a timeframe on her arrival, Ackland said he has been in regular contact with Brady.
“We will update media on that in terms of when Vicki may or may not talk to the media tomorrow or next week, but I would expect that she will want to get up to speed,” he said.
“I have been in regular contact with her, as has many members of the team, andly be in contact with her again tonight.”
On the outage, Ackland said Telstra had performed 639 welfare checks from failed or attempted emergency calls.
Of those 402 cases, 170 calls were passed to police for further checks.
Seven said they needed assistance and were referred to relevant emergency services.
Ackland was not aware of reports made by a South Australian senator that a death had occurred during the outage.
“I’ve seen the media reports as well and I’d prefer to leave the comments to South Australia Police,” Ackland said.
“I’m not aware of anything other than what the police have said.”
South Australian police are also not aware of any reports of deaths at this stage.
Ackland said he has spoken with communications minister Anika Wells and provided her with an update on the situation.
The CFO said the telco had identified a subsequent issue on Wednesday night that had impacted some calls to Triple Zero.
“The nature of this only became apparent as we resolved the original issue,” he said.
“This issue was a consequence of the same software defect we shared yesterday.
“While we’ve addressed the original issue, the subsequent issue remained ongoing and needed to be addressed in a different way.
“Overnight, our team made good progress, significantly reducing the occurrence of failed calls to Triple Zero.
The outage brought the network to a standstill for almost 13 hours. Supplied
“We’ve now implemented a solution that has addressed the impact of this issue.”
Ackland said mobile networks were complex and the company would continue to work through further changes to ensure we have the most robust solution.
“Customers can feel confident in calling Triple Zero,” he said.
“Our backup systems and our welfare check process remains in place, however we have not needed to complete a welfare check since the solution was implemented.
“While the broader outage was resolved yesterday, we’ve continued to work closely with a small number of enterprise customers on residual flow-on impacts to their services.
“We’ll keep working with our customers until every remaining issue is resolved, and as they complete all restoration and verification activities.”
Telstra CEO’s rise to the top
Vicky Brady became the first woman to lead Australia’s largest telco in 2022 after she rose through the ranks of the corporate sector.
The business leader worked in accounting and sales before she entered the telecommunications industry in 1997 with a role at Optus.
She worked in consumer and wholesale roles at the company for the next 19 years.
Telstra CEO Vicki Brady pictured at an event to launch Telstra’s new fibre network connecting Sydney and Melbourne in 2025. Dominic Lorrimer
Brady left Optus for Telstra in 2016 after she was passed over for a promotion to the CEO position.
As a teenager, Brady pulled beers at her father’s pub in regional NSW, an experience described as formative to Nine newspaper The Australian Financial Review in 2022.
“I pulled beers, I waitressed, I cleaned, I did the cash book, I did the banking. I enjoyed most of it,” she said.
“What dad really instilled in me was that if you’re passionate about it, you work hard, then you can build a successful business.”
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