Optus is today having to defend parent Company Singtel after it was revealed that the Singapore Telecom Company, did play a key role in the crash of the Optus network whose CEO is being defended by the Harvey Norman Chairman as other executives call for her sacking.
Harvey Norman has a lot to lose following the Optus network crash, now the retailers Chairman and major shareholder Gerry Harvey has come out in support of Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin who it now appears was caught up in a catch two situation after her network crashed last week taking down millions of customers.
Gerry Harvey is believed to have attended a dinner with Optus and Singtel executives on the night of the crash at a swanky Sydney Restaurant
Rosmarin who was pushed hard on who was at fault for the network crash, ducked for cover behind every excuse in an effort to avoid telling the market that it was parent Company Singtel that was partly responsible for the crash.
Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin who has Harvey Norman onside to defend her handling of the crash.
Her problem was that it now appears that parent Company Singtel the owners of Optus whose directors on the night of the crash, had been tucking into a private dinner feast at Catalinas in Sydney, which Gerry Harvey and his wife Katie Page attended, were responsible for the crash and that what Optus management and Rosmarin were doing over the following days, was protecting their Singapore masters from criticism.
On Thursday of last week, we sent an email to Optus media hacks asking whether the network was being managed by Singtel and the Singapore Telecommunication Company.
They failed to respond.
We went back again this week to ask again whether the network that crashed last week was being operated by Singapore Telecom (Singtel) or one of their network Companies?
Again, we got no reply.
Then when we published a story indicating that the failure was down to Singtel they responded claiming ‘Optus operates local Australian networks.
Like all networks, Optus interconnects with other carriers offshore in order to provide international connectivity.
The accountability for the operation of the Optus network and the quality of our services rests with Optus.
Design, deployment, and engineering functions are all performed by Optus working with our international vendors and partners, who provide advice and support.
Now it’s been revealed that the unnamed “international peering network” that contributed to its 16-hour-long network meltdown was its Singaporean parent company Singtel.
The revelation as exclusively revealed by ChannelNews on Monday, is a massive embarrassment for Rosmarin who has overseen two massive screw-ups in just 13 months.
The Sydney Morning Herald claims that a key Singtel network executive who left Canadian telco Rogers Communications less than two weeks after its year suffered an almost identical outage to Optus, is now working for Singtel.
Singtel recently recruited industry heavyweights Ng Tian Chong left and Jorge Fernandes to the Singtel Group management team.
They suggest that they have no evidence that he personally has done anything wrong.
Jorge Fernandes left Rogers in July 2022 and joined Singtel in June this year as its chief technology officer – a role he held at Rogers for more than four years.
The Rogers outage affected 12 million users, with around 25 per cent of Canada losing internet connectivity for about 15 hours.
Earlier this week we reported that Optus insiders were claiming that the hesitancy to name Singtel as the “third party” probably had to do with the fact the parent company’s board was visiting Sydney.
Optus insiders claim that the Singtel Internet Exchange, known as STiX, was the unnamed third party “network” that Optus alluded to in a statement on Monday afternoon as the one sending routing information to the telco’s routers on the day of the outage that put them into meltdown.
At one stage Optus management tried to deflect the blame to Akamai a network video management Company.
Optus engineers were adamant that Akamai was partly to blame.
However, Akamai definitively ruled this out in a statement on Monday night. “Akamai did not trigger the outage,” a spokesperson told the SMH.
Despite the crash affecting tens of thousands of Harvey Norman customers Gerry Harvey who in a desperation move following the success of JB Hi Fi’s mobile business that runs on the Telstra network got into bed with Optus to sell mobile phone deals is now doing his best to protect the Optus CEO.
He claims criticism of her was “very unfair” and that “everyone’s getting hacked” and besides, we “live in a computer world.”
Speaking on Perth radio he went on to claim that his Singapore store was his “best in the world,” and the retailer did “a lot of business with Optus.” e whole board, including Australia-based director Gail Kelly, attended a private dinner at Sydney’s Chairman and major shareholder Gerry Harvey, like with the hack last year, Singtel remains deathly silent on the outage, leaving the running to their CEO.
