Following a tumultuous reign at Optus, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has resigned as chief executive officer at the telecommunications company.
This morning, Singtel, Optus’ parent company, announced Bayer Rosmarin had tendered her resignation.
Bayer Rosmarin appeared at a senate inquiry on Friday to answer questions about her future with the company following a 12-hour-long Optus outage that left 10 million customers disconnected on November 8 2023.
Speaking to the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee on Friday, Bayer Rosmarin said that during the outage, she was focused on trying to rectify the issue in a series of crisis meetings. She said that it would have been “unusual” for her, as the CEO, to be public-facing during the crisis.
“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,” Bayer Rosmarin said on her resignation. “I was also able to communicate Optus’ commitment to restore trust and continue to serve customers”.
Bayer Rosmarin said it had been an honour and a privilege to lead the Optus team but has decided to resign. “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.
“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,” said group chief executive of Singtel, Yuen Kuan Moon. “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”.
Bayer Rosmarin has been in damage control after the outage, claiming that the Optus systems “are actually very stable” in the wake of suggestions that the outage came off the back of a routine software upgrade. These comments were later proven futile when Optus revealed in a statement that the outage came from “changes to routing information from an international peering network… following a routine software upgrade”.
Bayer Rosmarin also came under fire last year after Optus was the victim of a data breach that is believed to have impacted up to 9.7 million past and present customers. Melissa Hopkins, Optus’ chief marketing officer, left the telco earlier this year and moved to Seven West Media. In August, she said that “No one had prepared for” the data breach.
Chief financial officer Michael Venter will take on the role of interim chief executive until a new CEO can be formally appointed.