By Supratim Adhikari

Copyright brisbanetimes

The federal government has given Optus and Singtel a stern scolding, with Wells warning that there can be no repeats of the fatal outage. Optus will need to get its network and processes audited by independent advisors, which means the guts of its business will be now subject to two inquiries. The telco has launched its own independent review of the outage, which is being headed by corporate veteran Kerry Schott.

As for Singtel, its chief executive Kuan Moon Yuen looked suitably contrite as he fronted up to the media on Tuesday, apologising for the fatal outage while providing guarded support to Optus’ embattled boss Stephen Rue.

While Yuen refused to give a straight “yes” or “no” answer on whether Rue is keeping his job, he did point out that the former NBN Co boss had been hand-picked by Singtel to spruce up Optus after a couple of horror years following its data breach in 2022 and the bigger network outage in 2023.

Rue’s makeover has obviously come unstuck over the past week or so, but no one in the telecommunications industry believes he is going to lose his job. The simple reason for that is that finding a chief executive up to the task of fixing Optus is almost impossible for Singtel.