A Single GPS Receiver in Melbourne Made Australia's Largest Mobile Network Believe It Was 2006
Telstra outage: The night a network decided the year was 2006
On 8 July 2026, Telstra's mobile network failed across Australia, disrupting voice calls, text messages, emergency calls, trains, payment terminals, ticketing systems, and EV chargers. The cause: a GPS receiver in Melbourne, reactivated after maintenance, thought the year was 2006 and convinced the rest of the network. An independent review by Technology Audit Partners found that a timing loop and a GPS week number rollover combined to bring down critical infrastructure.
The culprit, you may ask? A single GPS receiver in a single chassis in Melbourne coming back from scheduled maintenance believing the year was 2006, and the rest of the network was persuaded to believe it.
- speedgoose
Human made summary: A telecom company had time synchronisation issues in a location of their infrastructure. They eventually used a single hardware GPS clock that fixed the issues but became their only authoritative clock in this location.
One day, the clock was turn off and on and it went 1024 weeks backwards because the time GPS time protocol sucks and use a week counter with too few bits.
Apparently a GPS clock can keep track of the time if it’s up and running when the week counter overflows, otherwise it has to take a wild guess. Apparently their hardware GPS clock used a hardcoded start time from its firmware instead of trusting a less reliable existing clock.
The article finishes with some AI looking suggestions to prevent such an issue to happen again.
Mine would be to have bought one or two more GPS clocks and not from the same provider.
- scriptsmith
Lots of bloviating AI-prose. Here's the original report:
https://www.telstra.com.au/exchange/what-we-ve-learned-from-...
https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/dynamic-media-pr...
- Nux
Coincidentally just bought myself a stratum 1 ntp/gps "clock" few weeks ago for £60.
Runs in my loft, what a time to be alive.
- rcaught
> Each decision solved the problem in front of it. Nobody was asked to look at the sum of all actions.
This is the perfect description of Telstra as a company.
- cube00
Author needs to decide which end of the stratum stack they want as the top.
> This design from 2010 had at the top stratum 1 sources at Australia's National Measurement Institute (NMI)
> Among otherwise comparable candidates, the lower stratum carries more weight.