Telstra customers have enjoyed two separate all-day outages this month, even though it is 2018.

One particularly PR-nightmarish outcome of these network issues is that a number of electronic ankle bracelets used to track those out on parole or bail in QLD, NT, and SA completely stopped performing their one function.

750 bracelets in SA and 299 in QLD were affected for a portion of the day – however some of those in NT were down for four days.

“At 8:10am Friday, 4 May 2018, there were approximately 85 electronic monitoring devices identified as having unresolved communication issues and by 11:30am, 23 had been resolved. By Saturday 5 May, only 7 remained unresolved,” a spokesperson from the NT Correctional Services commented.

On the upside: nothing actually went wrong, as the criminals wouldn’t have been aware the bracelets had ceased functioning.

Still, if Telstra invents the 5G Virtual Jail in the near future, I’d think twice before implementing it.

The article was originally published on Brag Magazine