Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has announced her resignation – nearly two weeks after the outage that plagued the company for nearly an entire day.
On November 8, Optus customers nationwide found themselves waking up with no phone service, and no internet if their home access is provided by the ‘Yes’ telco, too. The outage was mayhem, and the news cycle was absolutely dominated with call backs to September 2022 when Optus suffered a data breach and made people shitty over how it handled communications during this time.
As a result, Bayer Rosmarin faced Senate scrutiny on Friday, asked questions about how her telco handled (or didn’t handle) the outage, and what actually caused one of the country’s biggest telecommunications companies to suffer such a devastating situation.
“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. 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,” Bayer Rosmarin said in a statement.
“It’s been an honour and privilege to lead the team at Optus and to serve our customers. I am proud of the team’s many achievements, and grateful for the support of the Optus team, Moon, and the Group. I wish everyone and the company every success in the future.”
Chief financial officer Michael Venter has been assigned the role of interim CEO at this time, and the company has begun the search for a new permanent CEO. Former Optus business managing director Peter Kaliaropoulos will come on board in the newly created position of chief operating officer.
Prior to the Parliamentary hearing into the day-long outage, it was reported by the AFR that Bayer Rosmarin was considering exiting the company. Bayer Rosmarin had served in the CEO position since April 2020. “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,” Sintel Group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon said.
Optus said that the incident, which caused mayhem and shut down essential services like Melbourne’s train network and calls to emergency services, was caused by a software update across the entire network. In some cases, Optus needed to reconnect and reboot routers manually, and travel out to Optus sites physically to do so – which is why it took so long to rectify.
To compensate customers for the outage, Optus is offering 200GB of free data on phone plans, and speed boosts on NBN plans.
This article has been updated since it was originally published.