Telstra Went Down for Five Hours. Most Small Businesses Had No Plan B.

A software fault at Telstra knocked out mobile services, EFTPOS terminals, and payment systems across Australia on Wednesday morning. For thousands of small businesses, that meant losing their busiest trading hours with no way to process a sale.

The outage started around 4:30am and hit hard during peak morning trade. Payment provider Tyro reported that terminals running on 4G couldn't connect. CBA and NAB both confirmed merchant customers were affected. Telstra's CFO Michael Ackland said the fault involved time synchronisation servers at data centres in Sydney and Melbourne, and ruled out a cyberattack.

What went down

Telstra serves 24.9 million retail mobile services nationally. When the network dropped, it didn't just take phone calls with it.

EFTPOS and card payment terminals running on mobile connections stopped working. Retailers, cafes, restaurants, and service businesses lost the ability to take payments during the morning rush. Transport operators couldn't process fares. V/Line suspended all Victorian regional services. The Australian Rail Track Corporation pulled 9,500km of track offline.

Some triple-zero calls failed to connect. Telstra conducted 333 welfare checks on customers whose emergency calls dropped, and six people received emergency assistance as a result.

Services were largely restored by 9:40am, with the full network back by 4pm. But some regional train services remained affected into Thursday.

The part most businesses haven't addressed

The outage exposed a vulnerability that most small businesses already know about but haven't fixed: everything runs on one network.

EFTPOS, mobile comms, booking systems, supplier ordering, even security cameras. For many operators, all of it sits on a single mobile connection. When that connection goes down, there's no fallback. No manual option. No ability to trade at all.

COSBOA CEO Skye Cappuccio put it directly: "When payment systems and telecommunications are disrupted, businesses can be prevented from processing sales, communicating with customers and suppliers, and simply getting on with the job."

And the scams started almost immediately. Telstra warned that fraudsters were already calling people pretending to be from Telstra within hours of the outage. If someone calls you about the outage, hang up and call Telstra directly.

What to do now

If you lost revenue on Wednesday, document it this week while the details are fresh. Note your usual morning takings, what you actually took, any staff costs for idle hours, cancelled bookings, and refunds issued. Contact Telstra first. If that doesn't resolve it, escalate to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman or the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman. Small Business Minister Anne Aly specifically urged affected businesses to keep records.

Check how your EFTPOS terminal connects. If it runs on 4G only, you had zero fallback on Wednesday. Most terminal providers offer dual connectivity: mobile plus Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Some businesses run a second terminal on a different provider's network entirely. Ask your provider this week what your options are. It's a small cost relative to a morning of lost sales.

Keep a cash float. It's not glamorous, but $200 to $300 in change and a handwritten sign got some businesses through Wednesday morning while their neighbours turned customers away.

This article is general information only and is not financial advice.