Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has resigned from Optus, days after she faced a grilling from senators over the telco’s outage that impacted millions of Australians.
About 10 million Australians were cut off from internet and phone services during the 12 hour outage on November 8, with about 200 customers unable to make emergency calls to triple-0.
A senate inquiry into the outage was set up and, on Friday, Ms Bayer Rosmarin fielded questions about her future at Australia’s second largest telecommunications provider.
A statement from Optus’ parent company Singtel on Monday morning confirmed her resignation.
Ms Bayer Rosmarin said it had been an honour to serve as the company’s chief executive but it was appropriate she now step down.
“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 some time for personal reflection, I have come to the decision that my resignation is in the best interest of Optus moving forward.
“It’s been an honour and privilege to lead the team at Optus and to serve our customers.”
She was appointed to the role in April 2020.
The group chief executive of Singtel, Yuen Kuan Moon, acknowledged Ms Bayer Rosmarin’s work over the last three years at the helm of Optus.
“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,” Mr Yuen 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.”
Optus’ chief financial officer, Michael Venter, has been appointed interim CEO as the company “embarks on a global search for a new CEO”.
In other changes at the telco, Optus business managing director Peter Kaliaropoulous will enter into a newly created position, chief operating officer, from Wednesday.
The outage on November 8 came more than a year after Optus was hit by a major cyber attack.
During her appearance before the Senate on Friday, Ms Bayer Rosmarin admitted that Optus’ performance on November 8 was “not acceptable”.
Ms Bayer Rosmarin said it was “indisputable that on that day our performance was not acceptable”.
“We let you down, and for that I am deeply sorry. I want to make it clear that we have taken immediate and ongoing steps to rectify any shortcomings,” she said.
She confirmed to the inquiry that it had taken Optus days to determine what had caused the outage.
Ultimately, it found that key routers had disconnected from the network during a scheduled upgrade.
Lashed for not fronting media sooner
Optus had been widely lashed for failing to adequately communicate with customers during the outage, and in the weeks since.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young told ABC on Friday that for a “communications company, they’re not very good at communicating”.
During her grilling by senators on Friday, Ms Bayer Rosmarin defended not appearing publicly earlier, telling the inquiry her focus had been on the company’s response to the incident.
She said she wanted to affirm the outage wasn’t a result of a “malicious or ongoing attack” before speaking.
Once that was ruled out about 10.20am on the day, Ms Bayer Rosmarin said she began speaking publicly, giving 11 radio and TV interviews and four print journalist interviews.
Ms Bayer Rosmarin denied suggestions she should have fronted up earlier, claiming it was “very unusual” for a chief executive to appear in the media during an outage.
“It’s actually unusual for a CEO to appear at all during an outage because the public would expect that my focus is on working with the team to resolve the issue,” she said.
“Our communications team was giving updates to the media fielding questions, and the team had the view at the time that this was being covered widely and all our customers knew what we knew, which is that the network was down, that we were working on it, and that we were very sorry.”
Reputational damage ‘impossible to recover’
Marketing and tech experts had warned in the wake of the outage that the reputational damage caused by the outage may be almost impossible to recover.
Andrew Hughes, marketing expert at the Australian National University, said Optus had lost a billion dollars on their brand valuation according to a brand finance report.
“They’re billion dollar mistakes, they really are,” he said.
