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Australia
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Huge Optus network outage spurs CEO of Singapore Telecommunications’ Australia subsidiary to quit

  • Parent Singtel announced the resignation of Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin on Monday days after the massive network-wide outage
  • Executives told a hearing the company had no contingency plan for a failure that left nearly half of Australia without phone or internet for 12 hours

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Former Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin speaks on Friday during an inquiry into the massive national outage that hit the company’s network. Photo: EPA-EFE
Reuters
The head of Australia’s second-largest telecoms company Optus resigned on Monday, cutting short a more than three-year tenure marred by a massive network-wide outage and one of the country’s largest data breaches.

Parent Singapore Telecommunications announced the resignation of Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin days after a network-wide outage left nearly half of Australia’s 26 million people without phone or internet for 12 hours.

Chief Financial Officer Michael Venter will take over as interim CEO, Singtel said in a statement.

An apology message to customers from the Optus website is displayed on a phone in Sydney on November 14. The 12-hour network blackout hit more than 10 million Australians. Photo: EPA-EFE
An apology message to customers from the Optus website is displayed on a phone in Sydney on November 14. The 12-hour network blackout hit more than 10 million Australians. Photo: EPA-EFE

Rosmarin said she decided to resign after time for personal reflection following a parliamentary hearing on Friday where Optus executives said the company had no contingency plan in place for an outage of that scale.

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“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,” she said in the statement.

Appointed in April 2020, Rosmarin headed Optus through two national scandals that have tarnished the reputation of the telecoms giant. A massive data hack last year exposed the personal data of 10 million Australians and triggered a class-action lawsuit and multiple investigations from regulators.

The company was dealt a fresh blow earlier this month when a 12-hour network blackout hit more than 10 million Australians, triggering fury and frustration among customers and raising wider concerns about the telecommunications infrastructure.
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