A territory-wide technical network outage knocked out telecommunications and digital systems across key Northern Territory government departments and agencies on 8 October 2026, including Police, Health and Education. It began at about 3am NT time (4.30am Sydney) and was resolved about 12 hours later through what the government called undisclosed workarounds by the Department of Corporate and Digital Development (DCDD).

NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services issued a public advisory that non-emergency communications, including police assistance lines and phone lines to local police stations, were affected, while triple zero (000) stayed up and all Territory hospitals kept providing patient care.

Other agencies reported problems with phone lines, email and network-connected servers. DCDD says it is still investigating the root cause and how to prevent a repeat; the government has not said what caused the outage, and nothing published so far points to a cyber attack.

Primary: NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services public advisory; wire: iTnews.

UPDATE (23 Oct 2026): iTnews (8 Oct), citing ABC News (8 Oct), reported that the problem was linked to a gateway in the core network, and that three calls were missed during the outage, although checks found they were routine police follow-ups rather than emergencies, which qualifies the government's line that triple zero kept working throughout. DCDD's root-cause review is still open.