SYDNEY: The chief executive officer (CEO) of Singapore Telecommunications-owned Optus apologised to Australia’s parliament for an emergency number outage that was linked to four deaths but declined to stand down, citing a need for stability.
Stephen Rue started in the role a year ago following a massive cyber attack and separate half-day outage which resulted in the previous CEO leaving.
On Sept 18, Optus said a failure of its “000” emergency line affected thousands of people and four died as a result of the inability to contact emergency services.
Rue told an Australian Senate hearing there are questions about his position but “another change of leader at this time is not what Optus needs or what our customers need”.
He added that “the disruption and uncertainty could actually set back the transformation underway and create further risks.”
Optus announced on Oct 23 that its CFO Michael Venter and Chief Information Officer Mark Potter would be stepping down early in 2026.
KEY CONTEXT
Optus has been under intense political and regulatory scrutiny since a 2022 cyber attack exposed millions of people’s personal details to criminals.
The event resulted in a sweeping overhaul of Australia’s cyber-readiness and response rules including mandatory reporting and increased fines for prevention failure.
In 2023, millions of Optus residential and business customers were without phone or internet for most of a day after a routine software upgrade inadvertently sent its entire network offline until it was rebooted manually.
Rue told parliament the September 2025 emergency line outage was caused by human error during a routine firewall upgrade which meant that traffic wasn’t diverted before locking the equipment that was being upgraded.
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
