Optus waited almost a day before informing the public that its triple-0 outage had caused three deaths, while executives held multiple meetings and prepared talking points. Chief executive Stephen Rue told a Senate inquiry he was 'deeply sorry' about the outage but defended his actions and resisted calls to resign.
Rue blamed staff below him for failing to alert him earlier and said it was appropriate to wait until all welfare checks were completed before informing the government about the deaths. The telco's senior leadership appeared before a Senate inquiry on Monday, where Rue also presented a detailed timeline of events.
The timeline revealed that staff learned on Thursday night that hundreds of calls had been affected and that there had been deaths. Senior executives, including Rue, knew early on Friday morning. Despite this, the Australian Communication and Media Authority (ACMA) and Communications Minister Anika Wells were not told until that afternoon, just before Rue fronted cameras.
Rue said Optus had taken steps to improve its processes, including daily triple-0 test calls and protocols to check connectivity during upgrades. However, he blamed staff below him for not alerting him sooner. The timeline shows frontline staff learned of two deaths by 9pm on Thursday, but the information was not escalated to Rue until the next morning.
Once informed, Rue first contacted parent company Singtel and sought to contact Optus chair John Arthur. In total, 11 meetings involving executives and the board were held throughout Friday. ACMA was told at 2:36pm, but the communications department and Minister Wells's office found out through ACMA and contacted Optus just before 4pm.
SA Premier Peter Malinauskas had to call Rue personally that night for information, while WA Premier Roger Cook was contacted the following day. Two of the three deaths were in SA and one in WA. Optus executives were also questioned about why it took so long to detect the outage, which was triggered during a routine infrastructure upgrade by Nokia.
