Thursday, 1.30pm
A customer contacts the company directly to complain that Triple Zero calls are not working. It is at this point that Optus becomes “aware of the severity of the incident”, Rue said.
Early reviews suggest Optus “had not handled these calls as would be expected”, and the information is not escalated quickly enough.
Rue finds out about the problem “shortly after” this call.
Thursday, 1.50pm
South Australia Police contact the company and report Triple Zero calls are not working. It is at this point that Optus stops the upgrade and works to restore Triple Zero services.
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It begins “to confirm with relevant stakeholders such as police and other regulatory and government agencies and departments that we had experienced an outage”, Rue said.
Thursday evening
Optus commences welfare checks on callers who attempted to contact emergency services during the outage. The gap between the calls occurring and the welfare checks is “due to the complexity of pulling records from the network”, Rue said.
Welfare checks see Optus contact everyone who attempted to call the line. If they can’t contact them, Optus refers the information to “relevant police in the state”. During the welfare checks, Optus is informed of deaths in three households, either the people who had attempted to call Triple Zero or someone in their acquaintance.
Optus begins to notify “government agencies and departments” – but only about the outage, not about any fatalities. Checks continue into Friday morning.
Friday, time unclear
At an unknown time, Optus informs its board, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, the federal government and “other bodies” about the fatalities.
South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas calls Rue to ask about the incident. In a statement on Saturday, the premier said Optus provided the government only with suburbs, not contact details.
Friday, 5.30pm
Optus calls a press conference with short notice and apologises for the deaths – 28 hours after its management found out about the problem, more than 32 hours after its contact centre received its first call about the problem and about 41 hours after the firewall upgrade began.
Some government agencies, including senior South Australian government officials, hear about problems with the network for the first time via the press conference. Rue said the “late notification” to the South Australian and Western Australian premiers and the Northern Territory chief minister occurred “at roughly the same time” as the conference.
Rue defended the delay on Saturday by saying the company “spent the day confirming the facts, and I wanted to make sure the facts [were accurate] before we informed relevant agencies”.
Saturday, 1pm
Federal Communications Minister Annika Wells says Optus “cannot get these basics right”.
“Optus have let Australians down when they needed them most,” she says. “Australians have every right to be livid that Optus cannot get these basics right.”
Saturday, 3.20pm
At a second press conference, Rue says he will provide daily updates on the saga. In response to a question, he says he does not believe there are any further deaths.
Saturday, 4pm
Western Australia Premier Roger Cook says a fourth person has died as a result of the call failures: a 49-year-old from Perth. The death is discovered following welfare checks conducted by WA Police. Optus does not immediately respond to questions about the fourth death.
He says he feels “cynical” about the timeline provided by Optus. “I hope that timeline is the subject of further investigation by ACMA.”
Saturday, 5.45pm
In a new statement, Rue confirms the news that a fourth person has died as a result.
“I am deeply saddened by this further news and extend my heartfelt condolences to the person’s family and friends.”
