Optus CEO's exit necessary for firm to regain trust: Experts

Kelly Bayer Rosmarin became lightning rod for public, political anger over Nov 8 outage

- Jonathan Pearlman

The head of Singtel-owned Optus, Ms Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, resigned on Nov 20 following an outage that left 10 million people in Australia without phone or Internet access, as experts said the chief executive officer's departure was a necessary first step towards rebuilding trust with consumers.

Following a difficult period for Optus that included an outage on Nov 8 and a massive cyber attack in 2022, Singtel group CEO Yuen Kuan Moon said on Nov 20 that the firm viewed the "events in recent weeks very seriously".

"We recognise the need for Optus to regain customer trust and confidence as the team works through the impact and consequences of the recent outage and continues to improve," he said in a statement.

"Optus is an integral part of our group's business... We fully recognise the importance of Optus' role in providing connectivity services to the community and the importance of network resiliency and security. That is a top priority in all markets where our companies operate in."

The sudden outage, which lasted for about 12 hours and affected consumers, businesses, rail networks and hospitals, led to intense public scrutiny of Optus, including a Senate inquiry.

Optus is the second-largest telecommunications company in Australia; the largest, Telstra, is publicly listed.