Optus CEO dodges resignation questions after outage

Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has dodged questions about whether she intends to resign from her role, in a fiery two-hour Senate hearing into last week’s network outage that affected some 10 million customers nationally.

Bayer Rosmarin fronted the Senate hearing alongside Optus’ network chief Lambo Kanagaratnam on Friday morning, in which she apologised for the network meltdown and revealed that hundreds of triple-zero calls were unable to go through on the day of the outage.

The executive sidestepped questions about her own future, however, following a report in The Australian Financial Review that she may step down from her role as soon as next week, according to sources close to her.

Bayer Rosmarin has presided over both one of the nation’s worst outages and one of the worst data breaches in recent history, heaping pressure on the leader of Australia’s second-largest telco.

“This morning there’s been a media report that you intend to resign as CEO. Is it your intention to resign?” Liberal senator Sarah Henderson asked in the Senate hearing.

“Senator, I’m sure you can appreciate that my entire focus has been on restoring the outage issue. It has not been a time to be thinking about myself,” Bayer Rosmarin said.

Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin during a Senate hearing at Parliament House in Canberra on Friday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Henderson repeated the question, to which Bayer Rosmarin responded: “I thought I answered the question. My focus is on the team, with customers, the community. My focus is not on myself.”

Henderson persisted: “So that report is not correct?”

“I haven’t seen any reports today,” Bayer Rosmarin said after a three-second pause. “I’ve been preparing for being here.”

Optus has faced widespread criticism for its handling of the outage, when some customers were unable to make triple-zero calls. Train networks, businesses and hospitals were also impacted.

Senate inquiry chair Senator Sarah Hanson-Young grilled Optus executives.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

More than 200 triple-zero calls did not go through on the day of the outage, Bayer Rosmarin revealed on Friday.

“There were 228 triple-zero calls that were unable to go through, and we have done welfare checks on all of those 228 calls. And thankfully everybody is okay,” she said.

“We started doing the welfare checks after our connectivity resumed.

”We absolutely believe that the triple-zero system should have worked and it’s critical for all Australians the system can be relied upon. We don’t manage the triple zero system. It’s a very complex system that involves all the carriers. It involves the device manufacturers ... We’re still investigating that and we’re really happy that the ACMA [the communications regulator] has called an investigation into why this did not work.”

Bayer Rosmarin did not directly answer a question from Senator Sarah Hanson-Young about whether there should be a fine or penalty for failing to provide critical triple-zero services for some customers.

“Chair, as I’ve tried to explain, we don’t run the triple-zero system. We participate in the triple-zero system.”

Hanson-Young responded: “I think you should just ... I think this is going to wear thin.

“I think you’re just going to have to cough up, accept responsibility, apologise, and cop a penalty, surely.”

Optus has paid out $36,000 in compensation for the outage to date, Bayer Rosmarin said, with 8500 customers so far seeking compensation from the telco totalling $430,000. Optus is in the process of assessing the veracity of those compensation claims, Bayer Rosmarin said.

She added that the telco would be unable to determine the full impact of the outage on small businesses across the country.

Friday’s committee hearing was the first of a number of probes into the outage, including post-incident reviews by both the Communications Department and the communications watchdog, the Australian Communications Media Authority.

Senators Hanson-Young and Ross Cadell, who grilled the Optus executives, were scathing of Bayer Rosmarin’s evidence to the parliamentary inquiry and intimated she should resign.

Hanson-Young, who is chair of the environment and communications references committee investigating the Optus outage, blasted Bayer Rosmarin several times during the inquiry, saying she was “flabbergasted” the telco giant hadn’t considered letting its customers roam onto other networks during the national outage.

“I don’t bode much confidence in Optus being able to clean up its PR [public relations] disaster, its technological disaster, or indeed ensure this type of catastrophe won’t happen again,” the Greens senator said at a press conference following the hearing.

“The committee was pretty frustrated at the lack of specific answers to our questions, and really, what we did discover was that the Optus CEO and the executives at Optus had a backup plan for themselves, they had a burner phone for themselves, but there was no backup plan for their millions of customers.”

She said while Bayer Rosmarin’s tenure as chief executive was a matter for the Singtel board, she remained concerned based on the evidence presented at the inquiry “that this disaster won’t happen again”.

Hanson-Young said the federal parliament needed to consider whether regulation should be strengthened to ensure Australians could dial triple-zero even during a mass network outage.

Cadell said he had been contacted by dozens of Optus staff about the culture of the telco giant.

“[The leadership] is not talking to their customers, they’re not talking to their staff who are demoralised,” the NSW Nationals senator said. “It’s a business in crisis and that culture comes from the top.”

Cadell added that Optus staff told him there was a culture of outsourcing, no investment in improving internal capabilities, and too many employees were put on short-term contracts.

Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Cynthia Gerbert said her organisation would be making a submission to the Senate inquiry.

“The TIO [ombudsman] welcomes any review that improves the telecommunications sector and the community’s access to essential phone and internet services,” Gerbert said in a statement.

Liberal senator Sarah Henderson said Optus’ 10.2 million customers would not be impressed by the chief executive’s evidence at the inquiry.

While she was pleased that Bayer Rosmarin had committed to considering whether mobile roaming could avert a similar crisis, it wasn’t clear if she would remain as chief executive to lead those changes.

“A number of questions also remain about the Albanese Government’s management of the crisis including why more was not done to assist with contingency plans such as access to emergency services,” Henderson said.

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