Telstra sacks CTO Vish Nandlall over false CV allegations

Telstra Australia — A man and power lines are reflected in a Telstra poster adorning a public telephone in Sydney, Australia, August 13, 2015. Reuters/David Gray

Telstra has sacked its chief technology officer, Vish Nandlall, for allegedly falsifying his CV. The CTO has served 21 months under the Australian telco before he left last week.

The Australian reports that Nandlall’s exit was under a less than favourable circumstance. Telstra has apparently found out that he had faked his resume and plagiarised a presentation material.

Nandlall joined Telstra from Ericsson North America. Under his leadership, the company launched the Gurrowa innovation co-creation lab in Melbourne. He also led the Big Data and Machine Learning research and development initiatives of the company. Nandlall developed an Internet of Things incubator to develop medium term consumer solutions, stabling Telstra’s joint venture with Pivotal Labs. The future of these programs are now uncertain with his exit.

Telstra has confirmed Nandlall’s exit but refused to confirm the accusations.

“Vish Nandlall has left Telstra after serving as the company’s Chief Technology Office for the past 21 months,” a statement from the telco said.

Meanwhile, customers weren’t pleased but were even insulted by Telstra’s $25 compensation offer for its recent outages. Australia’s largest telco has been plagued with four major nationwide outages for this year alone, angering affected customers.

On Friday, COO Kate McKenzie once again apologised for the outages, offering customers $25 in compensation. To recompense aggrieved customers for the company’s shortcomings, McKenzie said customers would receive $25 credit to their accounts. The company said it would contact customers directly to apologise and offer a credit, although it did not confirm the exact number of those eligible for the $25 credit.

McKenzie explained that the recent outage was caused by the failure of a number of servers during maintenance. Read her detailed explanation here.

As of last week, about 15,000 customers were still unable to connect to the network. Telstra acknowledged that 10 percent of their Internet customers, or roughly 370,000 people, had been affected by the outage at one time.

However, $25 is not an acceptable amount to some customers. As they have pointed out, the long and frequent outages have cost them a lot more than the amount offered.

@Telstra $25 is an insult - the amount of time and frustration you have caused demands at least a refund of a months charges! #telstraoutage
— Tim M-Smith (@timboms) May 29, 2016

@telstra #telstraoutage $25 for some customers. What a joke. Inconvenience, extra work to catch up. Shame on u. Will be leaving. Last straw.
— Red Shane (@RedShane1) May 29, 2016

@Telstra an absolute disgrace,no internet for 14 days in Hamilton & all you offer is a $25 off the next bill #Nocustomerservice #disgrace
— Nicole Hyland (@nickerstaylor) May 28, 2016