Ex-chief Kelly Bayer Rosmarin severs final ties with Optus

The company has been gradually updating its website to reflect the executive changes but has not yet added Singapore-based Peter Kaliaropoulos who has joined in the newly created position of chief operating officer.

Mr Kaliaropoulos, who ran Singaporean telco group StarHub between 2018 and 2020, is considered a leading candidate for the top job.

Ms Bayer Rosmarin last appeared in public representing Optus at a Senate hearing in late November in Canberra reviewing the causes and consequences of the outage. The inquiry was due to report on December 9, but this week its deadline was extended until the end of February.

Submissions from the general public have called on the government to protect traditional payment methods such as cash and cheques so the economy can keep functioning during future technical outages.

“Cash should be mandated via legislation as legal tender for all payments, particularly government and essential services, and sufficient currency kept in circulation and accessible as a fallback option when technology infrastructure inevitably fails,” said a submission from Susan Miller, a retiree who said she previously worked in IT.

Ms Miller’s submission noted other countries, including the US, have been introducing legislation to ensure people can keep paying for goods and services with cash while the UK requires banks to provide fee-free cash withdrawal services.

Queensland resident Kathy Ran, who uses Optus for broadband internet services, also wants the ability to transact in cash protected.

“I have made a point of using cash as much as possible and will continue to do so,” Ms Ran said in a submission. “The Optus shutdown has shown quite clearly that electronic forms of communication, including financial transactions, are not reliable.”

Westpac is the latest entity to suffer technical problems, telling customers on Monday night that its mobile and online banking services were unavailable after a technology update. The bank said services were restored at 5am on Tuesday morning.

Tony Keevers, a customer of Moose Mobile (which is owned by Swoop Holdings and uses Optus to provide mobile phone and data services) said he had been told that he would not receive any compensation for loss of services during the outage.

“I pay Moose Mobile to provide me with phone and data services and Moose Mobile would no doubt pay Optus for access to their network,” Mr Keevers said. “If Moose Mobile and Optus have a contract for service why can’t Moose Mobile customers receive compensation for loss of access and loss of service?”

Optus has blamed its network failure on the shutdown of about 90 Cisco routers (which connect internal and external networks) to avoid overload, following a software upgrade at one of parent company Singtel’s internet exchanges (known as STiX).

It emerged in a Senate inquiry last month that Optus had never assessed what to do in such a scenario because it never prepared for the specific technical failure that occurred.

As well as disabling basic business transactions and authentication functions, 228 triple-zero calls by Optus customers failed during the 14-hour outage. It has argued moves to mandate compensation payouts would have wide-reaching ramifications across other sectors, including for energy providers.