SINGAPORE – Singtel announced on Nov 20 that the chief executive officer of its Australian subsidiary Optus, Ms Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, has resigned – a little over a week after a nationwide outage left about 10 million Australians without phone or Internet access for 12 hours.
Optus chief financial officer Michael Venter will concurrently take on the role of interim CEO as the company embarks on a global search for a new head, Singtel said.
Former StarHub CEO Peter Kaliaropoulos has been appointed chief operating officer – a newly created position. Mr Kaliaropoulos, who was previously Optus’ business managing director, will rejoin the company on Nov 22 and report to Mr Venter.
Singtel group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon said in a statement: “We recognise the need for Optus to regain customer trust and confidence as the team works through the impact and consequences of the recent outage and continues to improve.
“Optus is an integral part of our group’s business. We view the events in recent weeks very seriously. We fully recognise the importance of Optus’ role in providing connectivity services to the community and the importance of network resiliency and security. That is a top priority in all markets where our companies operate in.”
Mr Yuen also said he has every confidence that the Optus team will exert all efforts to deliver for customers and regain their trust and confidence.
On the CEO’s departure, he said: “Optus appointed Kelly at the beginning of the pandemic, and we acknowledge her leadership, commitment and hard work throughout what has been a challenging period and thank her for her dedication and service to Optus.”
The Nov 8 outage hit Australia’s second-largest telco a little more than a year after it suffered a major cyber attack in which more than two million customers had their personal data, such as passport details, breached.
Singtel said last week that its routine software upgrade was not the root cause of the outage, contradicting Optus’ initial claims. Optus later said the fault lay in the failure of its own safety mechanisms when responding to the software upgrade.
Singtel had stuck by the Optus boss following the hack, but the outage led to public backlash in Australia and a stock sell-off in Singapore, and made Ms Bayer Rosmarin’s position less tenable, Bloomberg reported.
Ms Bayer Rosmarin faced intense questioning in an Australian Senate inquiry hearing on Nov 17, during which she dodged questions about whether she would resign.
In the statement on Monday, she said; “Having now had time for some personal reflection, I have come to the decision that my resignation is in the best interest of Optus moving forward.”
The telco has offered at least 200GB of extra data to affected customers as it faces investigations and calls for class-action lawsuits over the outage.
Optus and its CEO were slammed for its slow response and lack of communication about the massive outage. Ms Bayer Rosmarin had told Friday’s Senate hearing that the telco intentionally did not contact customers directly during the outage, and instead prioritised posting on social media and doing live media interviews.
In a comment that was perceived as tone-deaf and out of touch, Ms Bayer Rosmarin appeared to make light of the outage’s impact on thousands of small business owners.
“I’m disappointed that a barber couldn’t do haircuts today,” she told Nine News on the day of the outage. “That seems like one of the few things you can do without connectivity.”
In an interview with radio station 2GB, also on the day of the outage, the then CEO also suggested that “customers could’ve checked the Optus website” to learn more about the situation.
Singtel shares fell when trading opened on Nov 20 and closed down two cents, or 0.9 per cent, at $2.31.
