No longer will Telstra be able to comfortably estimate that those affected numbered into the thousands. This second issue will have a long tail.

The widespread outage is affecting mobile calls and data connections, and has even prevented some businesses from processing payments.

Trains in Victoria and NSW were brought to a standstill as thousands reported issues with their Telstra network on Wednesday morning.

Carrier restoring mobile services after network used by millions goes down for many users, shutting down regional trains and affecting emergency calls

These outages have exhausted public patience, and promised fixes aren’t being felt yet.

The telco giant has let itself down in how transparent it was about the full impact of Wednesday’s outage.

The network disruption – which brought trains, traffic lights and Eftpos payments to a halt – raises questions about the resilience of services

The telco says a “secondary issue” is stopping some Triple Zero calls from connecting, hours after it declared the day’s outage resolved.

Some Triple Zero calls are still experiencing issues, Telstra says, as it races to fix a second network issue.

No longer will Telstra be able to comfortably estimate that those affected numbered into the thousands. This second issue will have a long tail.

The government has the power to ensure that network failures don’t become national catastrophes.

Insiders say the equipment behind the Triple Zero outage was flagged for replacement years ago, but the work landed in the “too hard” basket.

For a company built on selling plans, Telstra has made a mess of them.