Optus’ Bayer Rosmarin: “Our Systems Are Actually Very Stable”

Melbourne Australia - August 23, 2014: People shop at Optus shop on Burke st Melbourne, the second largest telecommunications company in Australia.
Aimee Edwards
By Aimee Edwards



Optus has blamed “changes to routing information” after a “routine software upgrade” for last week’s nationwide outage that affected 10.2 million Australians and 400,000 businesses.

In a statement released Monday afternoon, Optus said that around 4:05 am (AEDT) last Wednesday, its network was affected by “changes to routing information from an international peering network… following a routine software upgrade”.

(AAP: Dean Lewins)

“These routing information changes propagated through multiple layers in our network and exceeded preset safety levels on key routers which could not handle these,” the company said. “This resulted in those routers disconnecting from the Optus IP Core network to protect themselves”.

The comments from Optus are in direct opposition to those made by Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who suggested it was “highly unlikely” that the outage resulted from a software upgrade.

Prior to the release of the statement from Optus, experts theorised the outage was likely a regular software upgrade gone wrong. “The problem is too widespread to be due to a cable break or equipment failure,” said Tom Worthington, a senior lecturer in computer science from the Australian National University in Canberra.

When these theories were put to Bayer Rosmarin, she rejected the suggestions. “It’s highly unlikely, our systems are actually very stable,” she told ABC Radio Sydney last Wednesday morning.

“We provide great coverage to customers; this is a very, very rare occurrence,” she said.

At the time of the outage, Bayer Rosmarin told The Australian: “We’ve been extremely forthcoming with information, and we’ve put a notice out straight away. We’ve kept our messaging very simple and easy to digest”.

“As a critical infrastructure provider, we aim to give our customers a service that works 100 per cent of the time every day of the year, 24/7, and on most days we succeed,” she said.

Optus is now facing several inquiries and investigations due to the outage, including a Senate inquiry that will hold its first public hearings on Friday. Bayer Rosmarin is currently the only witness to confirm her attendance.

In a statement released by Optus, the telco confirmed that it supports and will “fully cooperate” with the reviews being done by the government and the Senate.

Latest News

Why Too Few Women Are Scaling The Career Heights In The IT Sector
  • Opinion

Why Too Few Women Are Scaling The Career Heights In The IT Sector

There’s still more work to do, to ensure female candidates have a decent shot at challenging and fulfilling roles, says AVEVA director of sales, Pacific, Christine McNamara in this op-ed. Who thinks Australia is doing ok, when it comes to evening up the scales in the historically male-dominated world of IT. Women comprise 29 per […]

Opinion
Host Of New Hires At Snap
  • Social Media

Host Of New Hires At Snap

Snap Inc. has announced a host of new hires across its team in Australia, including Dina Bailey as ANZ agency lead. Lead image: L to R – Dina Bailey, Bethany Rao-Davies, Sarah Ding, Rob Fitzpatrick, Tony, Daniel King, Elise Keeling The new hires include Dina Bailey, ANZ agency lead; Daniel King, senior client partner; and […]

X Booted Out Of Social Self-Reg Code Following Inaction On Voice To Parliament Disinformation
  • Social Media

X Booted Out Of Social Self-Reg Code Following Inaction On Voice To Parliament Disinformation

X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, has been kicked out of Australia’s code for managing misinformation and disinformation online due to its lack of response to user complaints during the Voice to Parliament referendum. Lead image; Linda Yaccarino, CEO, X Twitter and subsequently X, had been a signatory to the Australian Code of Practice […]

Leonardo.Ai Accelerates Global Growth Generating 700 Million AI Images In Less Than A Year On AWS
  • Technology

Leonardo.Ai Accelerates Global Growth Generating 700 Million AI Images In Less Than A Year On AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced that Leonardo.Ai, an Australian generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) content production platform, is creating 4.5 million new images daily on the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. Since launching in December 2022, Leonardo.Ai’s users have generated more than 700 million images and trained more than 400,000 custom generative […]