The Optus boss under fire following the telecommunication provider’s massive blackout that crippled the nation has insisted she has not thought about stepping down.
Kelly Bayer Rosmarin fronted a Senate inquiry on Friday into last week’s outage that left up to 10 million customers and small business owners without service for up to 14 hours.
The blackout meant people could not contact emergency services from landlines, public transport was delayed in Melbourne, business owners could not open or were forced to delay operating hours and phone lines in some hospitals also went down.
Ms Bayer Rosmarin was grilled from 9am to 10:30am about the events that unfolded when Senator Sarah Henderson asked a question on most frustrated customers’ mind.
“This morning there’s been a media report that you intend to resign as CEO. Is it your intention to resign?” Senator Henderson asked.
The Optus chief insisted her “entire focus” had been on fixing the outage.
“It has not been a time to be thinking of myself,” Ms Bayer Rosmarin responded.
Senator Henderson pushed further telling the CEO to address the question.
“I thought I answered the question? My focus is on the team, the customers, the community, my focus is not on myself,” the executive said.
The Australian Financial Review reported Ms Bayer Rosmarin was considering leaving Australia’s second largest telecommunications provider following the network failure last week and a cyber attack that exposed the personal information of its customers.
The CEO may step down as soon as next week, “close sources” told the publication.
The move would be seen as a fresh start for Optus and to restore some reputation as customers reportedly leave in droves after the latest public relations disaster to rock the provider.
“So that report is not correct?” Senator Henderson asked.
Ms Bayer Rosmarin appeared to paused for a few seconds before replying.
“I haven’t see any reports today. I’ve been preparing for being here,” she said.
A Senate inquiry was called last week after the entire country was hit by the outage, which affected Triple-0 calls and delays to train services in Melbourne.
The main issues raised repeatedly raised was Optus’ failure to regularly update its customers on the progress of the repairs and how long until services were back online.
In the inquiry, the telecommunications boss said she first wanted to prioritise the team’s crisis response 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.
“This was critical to ensure we could re-establish the network safely,” she said to the Senators in Canberra during the inquiry.
“Secondly, I wanted to ensure that before I spoke and given how little information we had about the cause and potential restoration time, that we could at least rule out the possibility of malicious activity to reassure our customers and the nation.”
Ms Bayer Rosmarin conceded she “could have done something better” but stressed she did her best by first issuing a “broad statement” at 6:33am, before conducting 11 media appearances, including three live radio chats and on all major TV networks.
During the inquiry, the Optus boss also retraced her steps last Wednesday morning when she woke up to discover she had no service on her phone.
She decided to “immediately” head into the office but realised on the way there the outage was more serious than first thought as she still had no service.
“Once I was in the car and I couldn’t not call the team, I realised it must be a more serious outage since I was already enroute, I continued driving and I did not stop and switch to an alternative SIM,” she told senators.
When pressed on what sort of backup Optus had to ensure its leadership team could still communicate during an outage, Ms Rosmarin said some key members had extra SIM cards on hand but acknowledged the system needed to be improved.
