Singtel says Optus CEO needs time to fix issues after emergency call outages
"It is very early days. It takes time to transform a company," says Singtel CEO Yuen Kuan Moon, who was summoned to Australia to explain the Optus outages.
Singtel's group chief executive officer Yuen Kuan Moon. Singtel is the parent company of Optus. (Image: Reuters)
SYDNEY: Optus' CEO will need more time to get its house in order, the boss of parent Singtel said on Tuesday (Sep 30), after back-to-back emergency call-outages in Australia intensified scrutiny of the Australian telecom carrier's governance.
The two outages that occurred less than a fortnight apart affected thousands of Australian customers, and the first outage has been linked to four deaths because customers were unable to get timely aid.
The incidents deepen Optus' reputational crisis following a nationwide outage in 2023, a 2022 cyberattack that compromised data of millions of customers, and an A$100 million (US$65.8 million) penalty imposed this year for sales misconduct.
Singtel boss Yuen Kuan Moon met with Australian authorities on Tuesday amid calls from some analysts and lawmakers for Optus CEO Stephen Rue to resign and for 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 Australia's second largest 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. Stephen (Rue) has identified, and I believe so in the initial investigation of the Sep 18 incident, that it is due to a people issue, and it takes time to transform and change the people. He is here to provide the solution."
Apologising for the Sep 18 network outage, Yuen said: "I'm here to support the Optus board and management to ensure that the independent investigation is conducted thoroughly and to make sure that future recurrence of this will not happen".
Shares in Singtel, majority owned by Temasek Holdings, fell as much as 2 per cent in early Singapore trade before recovering and were up 0.2 per cent on Tuesday afternoon.
The latest disruption to Optus' services interrupted emergency triple zero ("000") calls and affected around 4,500 people over a few hours early on Sunday.
Optus said in a statement late on Tuesday that equipment made by Sweden's Ericsson used in a cell tower south of Sydney "did not appear to operate as it should" on Sunday by failing to detect that 4G services were offline.
The statement added that both firms were working to understand the outage's root cause, and a review of all Ericsson equipment used by Optus found "what has occurred on this cell site is an anomaly".
Sunday's outage 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 board chairman John Arthur said the failure was not caused by a lack of investment from owner Singtel and was a "process-related incident".
"People made mistakes," he said. "It was not a question of money, it was not a question of investment, and in due course we will be talking about the extent of Singtel's investment in Australia, which of course goes beyond Optus."
Yuen said the deadly outage was due to a "people issue".
"The Sep 18 incident is due to a people issue and it takes time to transform and change the people," Yuen said.
"VERY SERIOUS LACK OF CONFIDENCE"
Wells, the communications minister, said there was a "very serious lack of confidence" in Optus to deliver triple zero calls.
"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.
She called for an external party to review its systems "so Australians can take advice not just from Optus themselves".
In a statement, Optus said consulting firm Kearney had been appointed to immediately begin providing external oversight, quality assurance and verification of its mobile network.
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.
