Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has been grilled by Senators over the major network outage caused by a “routine software upgrade” which left millions without internet for over 14 hours last Wednesday.
Many Australians woke up on November 8 to find they were unable to use their phone to make calls, send text messages or get online.
The service disruption knocked out the telecommunications system of the Melbourne metro, downed hospital phone lines and left businesses unable to conduct transactions.
Optus announced it would provide 200GB of free data by way of apology for the outage, but many disgruntled customers felt the compensation was not enough.
Rosmarin faced questions over the company’s handling of the network failure on Friday morning .
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who called for an inquiry the day after the outage, chaired the committee and began by asking how the Optus chief first discovered the outage.
“When I got up in the morning I could see that the phone wasn’t working and so I immediately decided to head into the office,” Rosmarin told the committee.
She then revealed the reasons why she did not front the public earlier during the massive service interruption.
The telecommunications boss said she first wanted to prioritise the team’s response to the crisis and figuring out the issue to bring the network back online.
Another reason was Ms Bayer Rosmarin had to make a decision on how to “handle” the call centre being down, if physical stores around the country should be open, boosting security for frontline staff and assessing the impact to IT systems.
She also dismissed speculation over whether she would resign following the fiasco.
When questioned about the reports, she said her focus was “on her team”.
“My focus is on the team, the customers, the community. My focus is not on myself so that report is not correct,” she told the inquiry.
The inquiry has now adjourned and will resume on November 24 to go over questions on notice.