Illuminated signs in the window of a branch of the Australian communications company Optus. David Gray – AFP via Getty Images
Millions of Australians woke up on the morning of November 8th to find their phones completely useless. An unplanned outage at nationwide provider Optus hit customers in the middle of their morning commute and extended throughout the day, throwing multiple systems into chaos. Businesses couldn’t process electronic payments, hospitals couldn’t answer calls, and public transit experienced delays. The downtime affected around 10 million Australians, representing around 40% of the country’s population.
Now the outage has reached its first peak with Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigning on Monday following a critical Australian Senate report. Her resignation ends an eventful tenure as head of Australia’s second-largest telecommunications company, owned by Singapore Telecommunications, also known as Singtel.
Bayer Rosmarin said in a statement released by Singtel on Monday that she had had time for “personal reflection” and that her resignation was in the “best interests of Optus moving forward”.
In that statement, Singtel said Bayer Rosmarin had led Optus through a “challenging period” and that Optus had achieved improved financial performance and market share gains under her tenure.
Bayer Rosmarin was named CEO in April 2020 and the November 8 outage was the second nationwide scandal under her leadership. She was deputy CEO for a year and previously worked at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
Last September, hackers broke into Optus and exposed personal customer information in what some described as the worst data breach in the company’s history. The company admitted that the data breach may have exposed addresses, driver’s licenses and passport numbers. In April, 100,000 people joined a class action lawsuit against Optus over the hack.
Then, on November 8, an outage left millions of Optus mobile and internet customers without a connection. The nationwide outage began around 4:00 a.m. local time; Connectivity to most of the network was not restored until around 6:00 p.m. that day.
A Senate inquiry on Friday found that Optus had not planned for a network-wide outage and therefore had no backup. Bayer Rosmarin also announced on Friday that Optus had received customer claims totaling around $282,000. The company assumes that a software upgrade at its parent company, Singtel, caused the outage.
Singtel said it understood the need for Optus to “regain customer trust,” group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon said in a statement on Monday. “We take the events of the last few weeks very seriously. We fully recognize the importance of Optus’ role in providing connectivity services to the community and the importance of network stability and security,” he continued.
Singtel is creating a new chief operating officer position at Optus, which will be filled by the company’s former managing director Peter Kaliaropoulos.
Optus CFO Michael Venter will take on the role of interim CEO of the Australian telecommunications company as the company searches globally for a new leader. Like his former boss, Venter came from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia before joining Optus in March 2021.