The CEO of Optus has admitted “our performance was not acceptable” during a Senate hearing following last week’s network crash that left millions of Australians without mobile or broadband coverage.
Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who has been criticised over the telco’s response to the massive outage, is being grilled by a panel of senators chaired by Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens. You can watch that live in the player above.
“We understand the intrinsic essential role we play in Australian lives and we take our responsibilities to provide continuous connectivity seriously,” Bayer Rosmarin told the hearing.
“As a business, we are nothing without our customers who put their faith in us. And it is indisputable that on that day, our performance was not acceptable. We let you down and for that I am deeply sorry.
“I want to make it clear that we have taken immediate and ongoing steps to rectify any shortcomings. And today I want to assure you, my teams and our customers that we are committed to regaining trust.
“Chair and senators, I understand there has been much commentary about aspects of our response to the outage. And I really welcome the opportunity this morning to answer all your questions as openly as we can, and hopefully clarify some misconceptions as well as be frank about some of our mistakes.”
Will Bayer Rosmarin step down?
The Australian Financial Review reports Bayer Rosmarin is considering stepping down as chief executive of the nation’s second-biggest telecommunications company after two scandals in 12 months.
The massive outage last Wednesday hit individuals and businesses, even affecting health and government services.
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The Optus network was down for hours, with landlines even cut off from Triple Zero access.
Optus earlier this week revealed the cause of the outage.
“At around 4.05am Wednesday morning, the Optus network received changes to routing information from an international peering network following a routine software upgrade,” an Optus spokesperson said.
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“These routing information changes propagated through multiple layers in our network and exceeded preset safety levels on key routers which could not handle these.
“This resulted in those routers disconnecting from the Optus IP Core network to protect themselves.”
The Department of Home Affairs had previously ruled out a cyber-attack as the cause.
