Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has resigned almost two weeks after the telco’s 14-hour nationwide outage.
Ms. Rosmarin said it had been an honour and a privilege to be CEO, but now was “an appropriate time to step down.”
Last week, she dodged questions from senators about her resignation following Optus’ handling of the outage, which stopped millions of Australians, 40,000 businesses, and emergency services from calling or taking card payments on Nov. 8.
“On Friday, I had the opportunity to appear before the Senate to expand on the cause of the network outage and how Optus recovered and responded. I was also able to communicate Optus’ commitment to restore trust and continue to serve customers,” 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,” she said.
Ms. Rosmarin has faced repeated calls to resign after the outage, the second major test of her leadership after Optus faced a catastrophic data hack last year that exposed the personal information of 10 million customers.
She has served in the role since April 2020.
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Yuen Kuan Moon, CEO of Optus’ parent company Singtel Group, said, “Kelly has always led with integrity and had all stakeholders’ best interests at heart. We understand her decision and wish her the very best in her future endeavours.”Meanwhile, he appointed Chief Financial Officer Michael Venter as temporary CEO while the telco searches globally for a permanent replacement.
He added that former Optus Business Managing Director Peter Kaliaropoulos will join Optus as the new chief operating officer on Nov. 22.
Mr. Moon was confident the new team would exert all efforts to “deliver for customers and regain their trust and confidence.”
“We view the events in recent weeks very seriously,” he said.
“We fully recognise the importance of Optus’ role in providing connectivity services to the community and the importance of network resiliency and security,” he said.
Ms. Rosmarin previously acknowledged that Optus’s communication handling had room for improvement.
“Could we have done something better? Of course, we could have, but I am also so grateful for the way so many of our people mobilised under intense pressure and unique circumstances,” she said, referring to Optus staff travelling across the country to reboot services physically.
“I am deeply sorry. I want to make it clear that we have taken immediate and ongoing steps to rectify any shortcomings,” she added.
Optus compensated customers with 200GB of extra data, accessible from Nov. 13 until the next few months.
Ms. Rosmarin said the free data package was a “gesture of thanks for the ongoing support and patience.”
At the same time, she said Cisco routers caused the outage.
“[The root cause of the issue] was that Cisco routers hit a fail-safe mechanism, which meant that each one of them independently shut down. That was triggered by the upgrade on the Singtel international peering network,” Ms. Rosmarin said.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young pointed out that Optus initially blamed Singtel’s software upgrade for causing the outage.
Ms. Rosmarin clarified there was no dispute with Singtel.
“We put out a statement that got interpreted [by the media] that the software upgrade was the cause of the outage,” Ms. Rosmarin said.
