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SYDNEY, Nov 3 (Reuters) - The CEO of Singapore Telecommunications-owned (STEL.SI), opens new tab 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 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. Advertisement · Scroll to continueReport Ad *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 October 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. Advertisement · Scroll to continue *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. Ad Break Coming Up NEXT StayNext OffEnglish 180p288p360p480p540p576p720pHD1080pHDAuto (180p) About ConnatixV2131534911 About ConnatixV2131534911 Continue watchingafter the adVisit Advertiser websiteGO TO PAGE Reporting by Byron Kaye; Editing by Sonali Paul Purchase Licensing Rights Get the key points from this story with Reuters AI
