Any chance of Optus’ new boss, Stephen Rue, moving Australia’s second-biggest telco in the right direction has been fatally derailed.

A surprise press conference late on Friday afternoon hinted at trouble. A 5.30pm all-hands-on-deck chat with the press usually means little else – and that’s exactly what was in store.

A solemn-faced Rue delivered the news – a technical failure, 600 Triple Zero calls failing to connect, three people dead.

Rue’s tenure as chief executive is almost certainly headed for a swift end.

Optus showed its former chief executive, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, the door after the telco endured a data breach that exposed sensitive details of 9.8 million customers in 2022, and a nationwide outage in 2023 that scuttled almost 2100 Triple Zero calls, under her watch that led

See Full Page