Australian telecoms to outsource more jobs to India

Melbourne, July 7. (UNI): In spite of stiff union and public resistance to send back-office and calling centre operations to low-wage countries like India, a huge chunk of Australia's telecommunication workload is reported to be on its way to the South Asian IT services giant.

While Government owned Telstra is reported to be poised to enter a "major deal" with Indian IT multinational Wipro, second largest Australian telecom company Optus is also negotiating with Indian BPOs to handle its IT development and management operations.

The inkling of Optus India move has reportedly come from briefing by the management of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) listed company to thousands of its call centre staff about increasing the numbers in India from 500 to 800 on immediate basis.

"On Thursday we reported to staff on the progress of our programme to grow offshore call-centre operations capability to supplement our domestic call centres," Optus spokeswoman Melissa Favero told reporters.

"The company commenced this programme nearly two years ago, and since then has grown its business and correspondingly increased its customer service head count," she said.

"We announced the number of seats in our Indian call centre would grow over time. It had 150 seats initially and about 500 seats now. To date, we have recruited and trained 800 people for the Indian team," The spokeswoman added.

Both Telstra and Optus are under pressure to cut costs as the telecommunication sector is showing signs of slowing down.

Another Australian telecom major '3' is also using Indian call-centre facilities and so are a number of leading banks.

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