It was a pet project of former Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who after convincing the board to acquire technology service Company tech2 and after spruiking the potential of a service model that saw the likes of Harvey Norman and The Lifestyle Store sucked into her plan for a business branded The O Team the whole model has gone pear shaped with staff sacked this week.
Rosmarin was given a pink slip after another Optus network crash left Australian without data and communications for hours.
ChannelNews understands that the revenues were not there to support a national staff base of over 60 O Team staff who are among the 200 Optus staff laid off this week.
Questions are also being asked as to what Harvey Norman will do , following the dumping of the Optus O Team operation.
According to the CEO of Theatre at Home Vinod David his Company has moved to using their own installers.
“We moved to our own installers months ago”.
He has not explained how interstate installs for Theatre at Home will be done with the NSW head office operation being able to access installers from their Lifestyle Store operation.
Rosmarin had the notion that service was set to become a $5bn market and she wanted a share of it. The business lasted less than 18 months under Optus ownership with former management now looking to go back out on their own with a new business offering.
Now she is out the door along with 200 employees who worked in Optus’s smart home installation business.
The Optus Director of Home and Device Enablement is Quang Nguyen the former General Manager of Cellnet.
At this stage it’s not known how much Optus paid for the Tech2 business whose profile is still active on LinkedIn.
More to follow.