Optus triple-0 outage tragedy: What we know and how events unfolded

The first public sign anything was wrong at Optus came when newsrooms around the country began fielding calls from its communications staff late on Friday afternoon.

The brief was to get down to the Sydney Optus HQ, or join the Teams livestream, as soon as possible — CEO Stephen Rue would be holding an important press conference, but no further details would be given.

What came next shocked the nation.

When Mr Rue started speaking at 5:45pm AEST — it was to report the tragic news that three people had died after a network outage stopped some customers from calling the emergency triple-0 line.

It was Optus's second major outage in less than two years and is now subject to a major investigation by the communications regulator.

While there are still a lot of questions, this is the timeli