For 12 days, the speculation from inside Optus’ campus in Sydney’s northern suburbs ran free. The Singtel board had given her until Friday. The Singaporeans were backing her to the hilt. It was Gladys Berejiklian’s decision not to be more forthcoming with details of the outage.

Last year’s cyberattack – which led to the release of sensitive information such as passport, driver’s licence and Medicare numbers of more than 10,000 customers – did not claim the telco’s chief executive, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin. There was little doubt a massive outage on November 8 would.