Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin is set to front a Senate inquiry this week, probing last week’s colossal outage which left millions stranded without internet or mobile phone connectivity for a staggering 14 hours.
The company has faced severe criticism for its handling of the outage, including for its lack of urgency in updating the public.
Loss of trust and confidence aside, if the national outage has taught us anything, it is there are real dangers in leaving the management of critical national infrastructure to a 100% privately owned company, in this case, a subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications Limited, or Singtel as it is better known.