Life under an Optus without Kelly: 200-staff smart home team axed

Former Optus chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin had big plans for tech and smart connectivity but the latest twist in a disastrous spell for the telco is the shuttering of its smart home team.

Optus has shuttered its smart home installation business. Picture: AAP

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin had big plans for tech and smart homes, declaring that by this year Optus would gain a significant slice of a $5bn market, creating handsome revenue streams that the telco could invest back into innovation.

She made that bold claim in December 2021. Three years later, she is not only out the door but so are the 200 employees who worked in Optus’s smart home installation business, which it called its O-Team.

Optus finally confirmed the mass redundancies on Thursday after The Australian first revealed the news on Monday. It has capped a disastrous 18 months at the telco, marred by a massive data breach and then a national outage, which cut off about 10 million Australians from phone and internet services.

Former Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin. Picture: John Feder

The company is scrambling to restore customer confidence and refocus. Almost three months after Ms Bayer Rosmarin resigned, it is yet to find a permanent replacement chief executive.

It has the hallmarks of a C-suite in chaos. Optus also lost its star recruit Danielle Keighery, who was set to run corporate affairs and communications but left the job before she began, taking on a similar role at Qantas.

Meanwhile, chief financial officer Michael Venter, who is acting CEO, is understood to not want the top job. But he is prepared to make the tough decisions, such as closing the O-Team and making 200 roles redundant, lifting the total number of sackings to 800 in the past year.

It comes as Optus’s Singapore-controlled parent, Singtel, revealed last November’s outage cost the telco $61.2m. Singtel also blamed the network meltdown for dragging its overall profit down 13 per cent to $S465m ($527.1m) in the December quarter.

Optus interim CEO Michael Venter.

As tens of thousands of customers leave for rivals Telstra and TPG, Optus axed its O-Team to shore up its bottom line.

“Optus continually evaluates our organisational structure and investments to ensure we are best aligned to meet our customers’ needs,” a spokeswoman said.

“As a result, Optus has made the decision to close the O-Team and the various service offerings it has provided.”

A total of 198 staff were axed this week, including Scott Lindsay, who joined the O-Team when Optus acquired smart home installation business tech2, one of several it bought to boost the service.

“Today, Optus O-Team we had grown over the last 18 months was advised that our time had come to an end, and we would cease to trade past March 2024,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

“It was great to be part of the journey, but life has many twists and turns”

RepTrak managing director Oliver Freedman said the fresh round of cuts at Optus could further impact the telco’s reputation and in his view would “hinder its recovery”.

“The perceived treatment of employees is one of the seven big drivers of reputation for a workplace,” he said. “For some people, (the redundancies) might provide supporting evidence for their current views (of Optus) and therefore slow any improved perceptions.”

The O-Team were the staff who installed Wi-Fi enabled security cameras, door bells and TVs. They even had electricians on board who would wire EV chargers.

Ms Bayer Rosmarin was even behind its push from ‘Telco to a Techco’, a corny term to describe the push and important role network providers are playing in the digital future.

In December 2021, she cited research that the smart home and IOT (internet of things) market was set to grow to nearly $5bn by 2024, “opening additional revenue opportunities to enable Optus to invest back into service and innovation”.

“With the expansion and evolution of our Optus 5G, we have bold ambitions for smart Spaces,” Ms Bayer Rosmarin said at the time, adding the telco would capitalise on less tech savvy Australians.

She said while almost 60 per cent of Australian homes had smart devices, they were not being used to their full potential, with one in three Australians struggling to set them up.

“With more device options available than ever before, knowing how to install and integrate all the technology in your home or office can be daunting, and many customers are unsure of who to turn to for support.

“We’ve designed Smart Spaces to take the guess work out of creating a smart home. With Optus, you no longer need to be a genius to create your own connected space.”

Optus has discontinued its O-Team.

The telco hasn’t ditched smart home products entirely, just the idea it could turn a profit installing them, and that customers would pay a $10 monthly fee for online customer support.

“Optus will continue to sell smart home products, including security cameras, doorbells, home hubs and more as part of our devices offering,” the spokeswoman said.

“Customers can continue to seek the advice of Optus’ in-store experts for guidance on their purchases.”

The telco began winding down parts of the O-Team business as early as last month, discontinuing the online part that was pay-for-play support post-installation.

Its website has been updated to inform customers the service would cease on January 19, but physical installations would continue until sometime in March before ceasing indefinitely.

“It is deeply concerning that Optus is adding another 198 redundancies to the growing list of workers who are left without a job in a cost of living crisis,” CWU national assistant secretary James Perkins told The Australian.

“We have seen the impacts of cuts like these with the recent Optus outage, and we will continue to see service decline if they keep cutting back where they should be investing — in the Australian workforce and local network.”

Originally published as Life under an Optus without Kelly: 200-staff smart home team axed