How is it that just 10 months after the 13-hour Optus outage last September that shut down the triple-zero emergency service and was linked to at least four deaths that Australia found itself back in the same place again?

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The irony is that the people who had switched from Optus to Telstra after the number-two telco suffered two major service delivery fails in two years experienced deja vu all over again. Size doesn't matter. Telstra is just as capable of letting down its customers as the next service provider.

While the cause of Wednesday's service blackout is yet to be determined with a 100 per cent degree of certainty, the prevailing view is that some form of human error or system failure is to blame.

While, as one would expect, the incident has left Telstra with some serious egg on its face and much to explain, the Albanese government doesn't come out of this smelling of roses either.

Communications Minister Anika Wells was overseas on leave (this is parliament's long winter break). To her credit, she returned to Australia with all the alacrity she could muster, but the initial heavy lifting was left to others, including the prime minister.

The embarrassment for the government stems from the song and dance it made about the measures it introduced to eradicate the risk of a major system failure after the loss of the triple-zero service last year.

Speaking at the time, Mr Albanese and Ms Wells described the Optus failure as "deeply concerning" and "completely........

© Canberra Times