New Optus boss ready for fresh chapter after two rough years for telco

New Optus chief executive Stephen Rue says he is confident of beginning a fresh chapter for Australia’s second-largest telecommunications company after two years marked by outages, a cyberattack and declining customer trust.

In his first interview since taking on the CEO role eight days ago, Rue – a former chief executive of NBN Co – said that he was intent on learning from Optus’ mistakes and lessons of the past two years.

Stephen Rue, Optus’ new CEO, says he has been welcomed with open arms.

The telco has paid a $12 million fine after a network outage in 2023 left more than 2000 Australians unable to make triple-zero emergency calls and is also facing Federal Court action brought by the consumer watchdog over alleged mistreatment of more than 400 vulnerable customers.

“Clearly, there have been challenges that Optus has experienced that have had an impact on our customers, but the opportunity is to learn from that and build stronger foundations,” Rue said.

“A lot of work has been done, but we need to ensure we have an open and transparent relationship with the community, with regulators and customers, and that we continue to listen and just provide great services.

“Whether it’s your own personal life, or organisations, you need to learn from the challenges you’ve had and apply those learnings.”

In what is a fiercely competitive telecommunications landscape, Rue said Optus should be a “great challenger” to the likes of Telstra, which holds a commanding position with more than 50 per cent mobile market share.

“We need to be a great service delivery organisation,” he said.

“We need to be one that customers turn to for choice and for innovative products, which is what a challenger does. We’re living through a cost of living crisis at the moment, so having choice is important. And to me, there’s a real opportunity to enable this company to be strong and a really important part of the Australian community.”

Optus on Wednesday posted strong half-year financial results, lifting earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the six months to September 30 by 7.4 per cent year-on-year to $1.1 billion, driven by higher mobile revenues and 80,000 new mobile subscribers.

Former Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin during a Senate hearing last year. She resigned three days later.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Chief financial officer Michael Venter, who has been serving as interim CEO, said the results reflected disciplined cost management.

“It was the strongest first-half result we’ve had in five years,” he said.

“The last two years have been very challenging in a number of ways for the team, but the whole of the team really rallied together to ensure that we strengthen our network and improve our resiliency.”

Rue said he has been welcomed by Optus staff in his first week in the role. He said it was too early to say if the company would need to trim its headcount, which sits at around 7000.

“I must say, I’ve been welcomed with open arms, which has been brilliant,” he said.

“The first eight days have been quite exhilarating, and I’m sure there’ll be many to come. I know that Optus will be successful, there is a real desire in the community for the company to be that challenger, to be that provider of choice, and I can see that resonated through the business.”

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