00:02A serious allegation. The senator posting her office received a report that an elderly person had died following an apparent
00:10failure to connect to triple zero during the Telstra outage. Police responded, saying they weren't aware of such an incident,
00:18prompting the state government to hit out, labelling the senator's actions downright dangerous.
00:24I would call on her to hand over the information, talk to police and let them get on with their
00:28job.
00:28Senator Little hit back, saying she'd prioritised the family's privacy, advising them to contact police.
00:36After visiting the senator's office today, police say they've made contact with the family of the person who died at
00:42a regional hospital yesterday.
00:44They're now investigating the cause and circumstances of that death.
00:48Most of the impacts to triple zero calls were felt in the eastern states, with police forced to do welfare
00:54checks in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.
00:57At least five people in that state needed further assistance.
01:02Meanwhile, Telstra says it conducted over 600 of its own welfare checks.
01:06The outage also caused havoc for rail services.
01:10The Australian Rail Track Corporation halting freight services across the country over communication and safety concerns.
01:17I think the problem is that something so simple can bring the whole network grinding to a halt.
01:25Mark Carter's spent over 20 years in the rail industry and thinks the 24 hour or so stoppage could cost
01:31millions.
01:32We'll see delays for up to a week of critical freight services.
01:38ARTC also operates the GAN, which cancelled its Wednesday morning departure during the outage.
01:45Patient passengers finally got away this morning, but not everyone could wait.
01:50I've got to get some flights up to Alice Springs, which I had to pay for, and they're last minute,
01:55so they're not cheap.
01:56Telstra's still investigating what happened.
01:59The chief financial officer confirming a software bug took its timekeeping systems back 20 years.
02:05I think customers can trust the triple zero system. It is a very robust system.
02:10The telco's CEO is now on her way home from an overseas holiday to calls for compensation
02:16and that the company should front the parliamentary inquiry looking into last year's deadly optus outage.
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