By Christine Chen and Renju Jose
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Optus’s CEO will need more time to get its house in order, the boss of parent Singapore Telecommunications said on Tuesday, after back-to-back emergency call outages in Australia intensified scrutiny of the telecom carrier’s governance.
The two outages that occurred less than a fortnight apart affected thousands of Australian customers and have been linked to four deaths.
The incidents deepen Optus’s reputational crisis following a 2022 cyberattack that compromised data on millions of customers, and an A$100 million ($65.8 million) penalty imposed this year for sales misconduct.
Singtel boss Yuen Kuan Moon met with Australian authorities on Tuesday morning, amid calls from some analysts and lawmakers for Optus CEO Stephen Rue to resign and Optus to be stripped of its operating licence.
Asked by journalists whether Rue still had his support, Yuen said it would take time to fix the problems at the No. 2 Australian telecoms firm.
“We brought in Stephen 11 months ago to transform Optus, to really address the issues that we had since 2022-23,” Yuen told reporters in Sydney after talks with Communications Minister Anika Wells.
“It is very early days. It takes time to transform a company.”
Singtel, majority owned by Temasek Holdings, saw its shares fall as much as 2% in early trade.
The latest disruption to Optus’ services interrupted emergency triple zero (“000”) calls and affected around 4,500 people on Sunday. The company said it was caused by a faulty tower south of Sydney.
It came just 10 days after a botched firewall upgrade triggered an outage lasting 13 hours that disrupted emergency calls in two states and the Northern Territory and was linked to four deaths.
Optus Chairman John Arthur said the failures were not caused by a lack of investment from owner Singtel. Yuen said the deadly outage was due to a “people issue”.
“The 18 September incident is due to a people issue and it takes time to transform and change the people,” Yuen said.
“VERY SERIOUS”
Wells, the communications minister, said there was a “very serious lack of confidence” in Optus to deliver triple zero calls.
She called for external oversight “so Australians can take advice not just from Optus themselves”.
“The CEO of Optus now needs to work with their parent company Singtel on the systems and holistic change required within their own company to give that confidence back to Australians,” she said.
Former Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin was ousted over the nationwide outage of Optus services in 2023. Rue took the reins in November 2024 and was tasked with improving service standards for customers.
($1 = 1.5191 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Christine Chen and Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Stephen Coates)
