Optus boss dodges questions over job after Australia-wide outage

The head of Australia’s second-largest telecommunications company, Optus, sidestepped questions from a parliamentary panel about her position following a nationwide outage that disconnected millions of customers and disabled parts of the public-transport network.

Chief executive officer Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was repeatedly asked by a senate committee investigating the crash if she was considering resigning, and whether Optus required fresh leadership. Rosmarin replied that her focus had been on the crisis. “It has not been a time to think about myself,” she said. She said she hadn’t seen a report Friday that she might quit as soon as next week.

The Nov 8 outage struck Optus, which is owned by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd, little more than a year after it was hit by a major cyberattack. Rosmarin said the recent network failure meant 228 emergency calls for police, ambulance or firefighters failed to connect.

The outage switched off mobile and Internet services for Optus users across Australia. Some network-reliant trains in Melbourne ground to a halt and banking transactions couldn’t be processed. The company had no specific contingency plan.

Optus blamed the outage on incorrect routing information that cascaded through the network following a software upgrade. Subsequent changes to the network mean the issue can’t happen again, Optus said.

Lambo Kanagaratnam, Optus managing director of networks, told the inquiry in Canberra that the company had only planned for partial network failures, not a comprehensive breakdown. “We didn’t have a plan in place for that scale of outage,” he said.

Rosmarin defended the company’s communications in the hours after the outage, and its offer of free data, rather than money, to affected customers.

About 8,500 customers and small businesses affected by the crash have contacted Optus seeking compensation totaling A$430,000 (RM1.30mil or US$278,000), she said. Optus has so far paid out A$36,000 (RM109,112), either in cash or services, she said. – Bloomberg