Kelly Bayer Rosmarin has resigned as the chief executive of Optus in the wake of the nationwide outage that took down phone and internet services for 14 hours close to two weeks ago.
In a statement released by Optus’s parent company, Singtel, on Monday morning, Bayer Rosmarin said it was an appropriate time to step down, following her appearance at a Senate inquiry into the outage on Friday.
“On Friday I had the opportunity to appear before the Senate to expand on the cause of the network outage and how Optus recovered and responded,” Bayer Rosmarin said.
“I was also able to communicate Optus’s commitment to restore trust and continue to serve customers. Having now had time for some personal reflection, I have come to the decision that my resignation is in the best interest of Optus moving forward.”
On Friday, Optus confirmed the outage was due to a configuration issue with more than 90 Cisco routers, which could not cope with changes to routing information supplied from Singtel Internet Exchange (STiX) after a routine software upgrade.
The company has indicated changes have been made to prevent the same issue happening again.
Bayer Rosmarin, 47, had been CEO of Optus since April 2020, and was deputy CEO for a year before that. Singtel’s group CEO, Yuen Kuan Moon, paid tribute to Bayer Rosmarin’s impact on the business, saying it was marked by improved financial performance, market share gains and higher employee engagement.
“Optus appointed Kelly at the beginning of the pandemic, and we acknowledge her leadership, commitment and hard work throughout what has been a challenging period and thank her for her dedication and service to Optus.”
However, in 2022, Bayer Rosmarin oversaw the biggest data breach in Australia’s history, following a cyber-attack on a company, which was followed by the outage this year.
In the Senate hearing on Friday, Bayer Rosmarin repeatedly refused to speculate about whether she would resign, saying her focus had been on recovering from the outage. The then chief executive faced questions from senators for more than two hours about the company’s handling of the outage and the communication with government ministers, media and the public.
Bayer Rosmarin said she did not speak to the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, until four hours into the outage last week, waiting until she was able to get into the office and hold a crisis meeting.
She acknowledged that the company had only provided select media interviews during the outage, and said she would consider holding press conferences in the future, but it was “unusual for a CEO” to front the public during an outage.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on Monday described the Optus outage as “a shocker” and “a complete fail”, saying Bayer Rosmarin’s resignation was unsurprising.
“This was a shocking incident. Michelle Rowland was right on top of it out there giving more information, frankly, than Optus were giving out there to customers. And so this is a really regrettable incident,” he told Sky News.
“We’ve set up an analysis that we’ll have of what are the lessons from this. We’ll be transparent about sending that message through to the private sector as well as to the public sector,” he told Sky News.
Greens communications spokesperson and chair of the Optus outage inquiry, Sarah Hanson-Young, said that in resigning Bayer Rosmarin had taken responsibility and that was “more than I can say about some blokes in her position, frankly”.
Hanson-Young thanked the outgoing CEO for appearing on Friday and said the inquiry’s work will continue.
“We will be pushing for solutions. We need stronger and better regulation to hold big telecommunications companies to account and to ensure they’re operating in the public interest, not just the interest of their boards and shareholders.”
The shadow communications minister, David Coleman, said it was “not surprising” Bayer Rosmarin resigned, and said the government needs to focus on its investigations into the outage, including why hundreds of 000 calls could not connect.
“We know that there are at least 228 triple-zero calls that did not go through on the day,” he said.
Optus’s chief financial officer, Michael Venter, has been appointed as interim CEO while a global search for a new CEO commences. The company has also appointed the former Optus business managing director Peter Kaliaropoulos in the newly created role of chief operating officer.
Yuen said on Monday there was a need for Optus to regain customer trust and confidence.
“Optus’s priority is about setting on a path of renewal for the benefit of the community and customers,” he said.
