Optus’ managing director of networks, Lambo Kanagaratnam, has become the second top-level executive to resign from the telco in the wake of a mass outage which left 10 million customers and 400,000 businesses without phone or internet service.
In a statement sent to staff, interim Optus CEO Michael Venter said Mr Kanagaratnam had decided the “time is right” for him to leave the company.
Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned as CEO just weeks after the outage.
At the time, Optus was already in strife after more than 2 million customers had their personal ID numbers compromised by a 2022 cyber attack.
Mr Kanagaratnam was one of the many people to face a Senate inquiry after the mass outage.
He told the inquiry at the time the telco was only “pretty confident” that they could rule out a cyber attack on the day of the outage.
He said during the hearing that telcos dealt with “millions of cyber attacks” every year.
“It’s an ongoing threat and issue that we have to deal with all the time,” Mr Kanagaratnam told the inquiry.
In the memo to staff, Mr Venter said he regarded Mr Kanagaratnam as someone who was “calm under pressure, approachable, cares deeply about our people and our business”.
“Personally, I have the highest regard for Lambo as someone who consistently demonstrates the characteristics that we all know him for,” Mr Venter said.
Mr Kanagaratnam will be replaced by group chief technology officer Jorge Fernandes until the company finds a permanent replacement.
