On July 8, 2026, a GPS receiver at Telstra mistakenly set the network time to 2006 after returning from maintenance, causing widespread outages across Australia's largest mobile network and disrupting voice calls, texts, emergency services, trains, payment terminals, and EV chargers. The incident highlighted the critical dependency of modern mobile networks on precise time synchronization, particularly for TDD-based 5G systems where cells must coordinate transmission and reception in microsecond intervals.
In May 2003, the University of Wisconsin experienced a denial-of-service flood targeting its Internet time server, traced to flawed SNTP clients in Netgear routers that were sending malformed requests. Netgear cooperated with the university to develop firmware fixes for affected products and the incident prompted discussion of network operational responses and internet best practices clarification.