Australian minister says telcos are least trusted industry as outage hits phone services

A nationwide outage at Telstra, Australia's largest telecom company, disrupted phone services and online payments, prompting strong criticism from Communications Minister Anika Wells and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. This incident highlights the critical trust issues surrounding the telecom industry, as evidenced by Wells' comments labeling telcos as the least trusted sector. While Telstra has ruled out a cyberattack, attributing the failure to a software defect, the investigation into its root cause and broader impact is ongoing, underscoring the vulnerabilities in national communications infrastructure.