Australia’s national telecom company Telstra will outsource 170 jobs from one of its fastest-growing business units to India from October.

The move comes weeks after its announcement internally in May that it would be reorganising its operational activities into five groups, three of which — Networks, IT Solutions and Customer Service Delivery — would be new.

Head of Telstra’s Network Applications and Services division, which generated $636 million in revenues, David Burns, said the company’s current business model was inadequate and it needed to be able to shift some jobs to India.

According to media reports, the Indian jobs would be back-office functions.

Burns said the latest move would see up to 170 existing back-office roles shifted to a third-party Indian outsourcer. He added that the negotiations had not been completed, but a preferred tenderer had been selected.

The company also said that about half of its 30,000 strong domestic workforce would be affected by the changes. But the number of job cuts had not been known until now. The staff were told of the potential job cuts earlier today.

In February, Telstra’s Sensis directories business had announced axing over 648 jobs by stating that its customers would get better service from Filipino or Indian call centre workers.

Managing director of Telstra’s Sensis directories business John Allan had said, “the vendors that we are considering provide services for customers that go beyond our service today such as 24/7 operations and unique technologies that assist in processing efficiencies, which they do for many directory businesses around the world.’’

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