On 8 July 2026, a fault in a timing device caused a nationwide outage of Telstra’s mobile network. For around 12 hours, calls and data were disrupted across Australia. At the peak of the outage, 45 per cent of all calls and data sessions were affected, and up to 8.8 million users were impacted. Some people could not reach Triple Zero (000), regional trains in Victoria stopped running, and small businesses could not process payments.

ACCAN commissioned FTI Consulting to estimate what the outage cost consumers, businesses and the Australian economy. The report is intended as a case study for any large mobile outage. It provides an evidence base for policy discussions about network resilience, consumer protections and compensation. The results show that mobile communications are essential to Australia’s economy and require effective regulation to meet community expectations and drive economic productivity.

The outage is estimated to have cost the Australian economy $552 million in value-added terms once the broader economic effects across industries are included. The report takes a deliberately 'conservative’ approach, and FTI Consulting describes its $552 million finding as a ‘lower bound’ estimate of the impacts of this outage. 

In recognition of the limited public reporting regarding the impact on several key services, the report does not attempt to value health consequences or the disruption to freight rail services. The exclusion of these impacted services results in a conservative assessment of the economic costs of the outage event.

Read the full report here: 

You can find a concise summary of the report here: