CEO of Singapore-owned Optus refuses to resign after Australian outage linked to 4 deaths
Stephen Rue apologised for September’s emergency line outage but said a change of leader ‘is not what Optus or our customers need’
Stephen Rue started in the role a year ago following a massive cyberattack and separate half-day outage which resulted in the previous CEO leaving.
On September 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 on Monday there were 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 under way and create further risks”.
