Telstra Group Limited is an Australian telecommunications company that builds and operates telecommunications networks and markets related products and services. It is a member of the S&P/ASX 20 stock index, and is Australia's largest telecommunications company by market share.
Telstra has a long history in Australia, originating together with Australia Post as the Postmaster-General's Department upon federation in 1901. Telstra had transitioned from a state-owned enterprise to a fully privatised company by 2006.
History
Australia's telecommunications services were originally controlled by the Postmaster-General's Department (PMG), formed in 1901 as a result of Australian Federation. Prior to 1901, telecommunications were administered by each colony. On 1 July 1975, separate commissions were established by statute to replace the PMG. Responsibility for postal services was transferred to the Australian Postal Commission (Australia Post). The Australian Telecommunications Commission, trading as Telecom Australia, ran domestic telecommunication services.
In 1989, the ATC introduced new buildings and frameworks. In 1993, the Overseas Telecommunications Commission, a separate government body established in 1946, was merged with the Australian Telecommunications Corporation into the short-lived Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation (AOTC) which continued trading under the established identities of Telecom and OTC. The AOTC was renamed to Telstra Corporation Limited in April 1993.
Telstra has faced competition since the early 1990s from Optus (Australia's second largest communication company) and a number of smaller providers. Telstra once retained ownership of the fixed-line telephone network, but since the nationwide upgrade to the National Broadband Network (NBN), the Australian Government now has legal ownership of these lines since 2007, though Telstra has played a big part in this upgrade supplying resources to the Government on the new network.. In 2025, Telstra sold its remaining 35% stake in Australian media company Foxtel.
Overseas Telecommunications Commission
The Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) was established by an Act of Parliament in August 1946.Information sources: OTC annual reports (Australian state and national libraries, OTC Australia Archive, Telstra Archive), OTC magazine Transit, (Australian state and national libraries, OTC Australia Archive, Telstra Archive). It inherited facilities and resources from AWA and Cable & Wireless, and was charged with responsibility for all international telecommunications services into, through and out of Australia.
On 1 February 1992, it was merged with Telecom as the Australian and Overseas Telecommunications Corporation (AOTC). The new organisation underwent a corporate identity review and was subsequently renamed Telstra for international business in 1993 and domestic business in 1995.
Privatisation Beginning in 1997 and finalising in 2011, the Federal Government began to privatise the corporation. The first three stages was initiated by the Howard government: the first, informally known as "T1" (with shares priced at $3.30), occurred in 1997. "T2" ($7.40) followed in 1999; "T3" ($3.60) in 2006.
In T1, the government sold one third of its shares in Telstra for $14 billion and publicly listed the company on the Australian Securities Exchange. In 1998, a further 16% of Telstra shares were sold to the public, leaving the Australian government with 51% ownership. In 2006, T3 was announced by the government and was the largest of the three public releases, reducing the government's ownership of Telstra to 17%. The 17% remainder of Telstra was placed in the Future Fund, a sovereign wealth fund established mainly to meet future liabilities for payment of superannuation to retired federal public servants.
In 2009, the Future Fund sold off another $2.4 billion worth of shares, reducing the government's stake in Telstra to 10.9%. In August 2011, under the Gillard government, the Future Fund sold its remaining "above market weight" Telstra shares, reducing its holding to 0.8% of the shares, effectively completing Telstra's privatisation.
With more than one million shareholders, Telstra is currently the most widely held ASX-listed company.
National Broadband Network
On 26 November 2008, Telstra submitted a non-complying tender issued by the federal government to build a National Broadband Network, a 12-page letter proposing a $5 billion broadband network covering between 80 and 90 percent of the Australian population in major cities, despite the tender requiring 98 percent coverage.
As a result, Telstra was removed from the National Broadband Network RFP process on 15 December 2008. In response, Telstra announced that it would raise speeds on its existing Next G network and HFC "cable" network so that they both offer higher speeds than the RFP for the NBN requires. Following Telstra's exclusion from the National Broadband Network bidding process Telstra's share price suffered the biggest one-day percentage fall in its history.
NBN Co Limited signed a definitive agreement with Telstra on , estimated to be worth post-tax net present value, building upon the signing of a financial heads of agreement a year beforehand. Telstra agreed to "disconnect" its Internet customers from the copper and hybrid fibre-coaxial networks in areas where FTTP has been installed, and agreed to lease dark fibre, exchange space and ducts to NBN Co. As part of the agreement, Telstra would not be able to market their mobile network as an alternative to the NBN for a number of years. Telstra remains the owner of its networks. On 18 October 2011, Telstra shareholders overwhelmingly approved the deal.
On 14 December 2014 it was announced that in a A$11b renegotiated deal Telstra will transfer ownership of its copper and hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) networks to NBN while disconnecting premises from these networks. This ownership allows NBN Co to use these networks "where it sees fit in for its multi-technology NBN rollout."
Incidents
WotNext In January 2007 Telstra launched WotNext, a video-publishing website that allowed users to upload videos. The video content was then sold to mobile users for A$1, which the uploader and Telstra split equally. The website was shut down in after a media backlash over uploaded semi-pornographic videos.
2011 privacy investigation On 12 July 2011, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) released the findings of its investigation into a mailing list error that resulted in approximately 60,300 Telstra customers' personal information being sent to other customers. The Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim said that the OAIC investigation confirmed that while Telstra breached the Privacy Act when the personal information of a number of its customers was disclosed to third parties, this incident was caused by a one-off human error. The OAIC concluded that Telstra had taken steps to protect the personal information of its customers including privacy obligations in agreements with mailing houses, privacy impact assessments, and procedures to ensure staff handle personal information appropriately during mail campaigns. After becoming aware of the mailing list error, the commissioner determined that Telstra had acted "immediately" to prevent further breaches, notify customers, review its data security practices, and counselling staff involved the accidental data leak.
Emergency calling outage On 4 May 2018, Telstra suffered a major outage impacting callers to 000 for several hours.
Christchurch mosque shootings On 20 March 2019, Telstra blocked access to 4chan, 8chan, Zero Hedge, and Liveleak as a reaction to the Christchurch mosque shootings.
Race relations In May 2021, the Federal Court of Australia ordered the company to pay a $50 million fine for mistreating their Indigenous customers by encouraging them to sign up to plans they did not need or could not afford. In 2023, Telstra declared support for the Yes campaign in the 2023 Australian Indigenous Voice referendum, citing their "strong ties to Indigenous communities and employees".
2025 outage While the 2025 Optus emergency calling outage was gaining significant media attention, Telstra also suffered an outage that lasted for 12hours in the south west of Western Australia.
2026 outage On 8 July 2026, the Telstra mobile network experienced an outage that lasted from about 4:30 am AEST and was about 90 percent resolved by 9:45am AEST, with the entire service restored by 4:00 pm AEST. The outage affected train services in New South Wales and Victoria, payments were disrupted and some emergency services were not available, with camp-on for emergency services also being non-functional for some customers. Camp on allows for emergency calls to go through another mobile network if your providers mobile network is down. This was because of a known Symmetricom SyncServer S300 GPS rollover bug.
The bug in question had started when the server had come back online after a chassis change at 2:50am, in which GPS card in the chassis had been reset and started sending incorrect time data to the rest of the network because of a known GPS rollover issue, where the time was set back to November 2006, a 1024-week difference to the actual time. The time shift happened because the network time server would reset its 10-bit week counter to zero every 1024 weeks. The GPS card was missing a firmware update which would have prevented this time shift.
On 9 August, the Telstra mobile network had another outage in Cape York, Far North Queensland following a fire that occurred near Weipa on the evening of 8 August, the outage affected towns including Weipa, Mapoon, Aurukun, Mission River, Napranum and Rocky Point, the outage meant that residents were unable to call emergency services.
David Thodey era (2010–2015) Under the leadership of David Thodey, Telstra embarked upon a transformation agenda to become more sales and service focused. As part of that, an ambitious customer service agenda was defined. In 2014, Telstra was named "most respected company" by the Australian Financial Review newspaper.
Market share recovery Early in 2010, Telstra announced the creation of a $1 billion "fighting fund" to be used in a concerted effort to win back market share in key product categories. This effort seems to have paid off with strong sales momentum announced in February 2011.
Customer service recovery As part of its new strategy, Telstra announced that its "goal is for customer service to be fundamental to everything we do". In August 2011, Telstra Digital announced expansion of customer service into social media with 24/7 coverage. By November 2012, Telstra claimed 140,000 live chats for the month and a growth rate of this service of 600% p.a. In October 2013, Telstra announced that it had grown its Live Chat workforce to 600 and its social media workforce to 30. Customer Service became a pillar of the corporation's social responsibility ethos according to Telstra's head of social services Gerard Devan and the Telstra foundation.
The following table shows total complaints handled by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) 2010–2015, and of those, the ones made against Telstra.
Year Total complaints Complaints about TelstraPercentage of all complaints Source 2010 167,772 78,61147% 2011 197,682 78,94940% 2012 193,702 69,99136% 2013 158,652 57,29836% 2014 138,946 58,00942% 2015 124,417 55,52945%
Telstra Digital In February 2011, Telstra announced the formation of Telstra Digital under the leadership of Gerd Schenkel who was hired from National Australia Bank/UBank. Gerd reported to Karsten Wildberger who was Group Managing Director of Telstra Consumer, and was ultimately appointed to be the new minister for digitization of Germany in 2025.