Telecom plans to sack hundreds of call centre staff at its struggling Australian subsidiary in an attempt to resurrect the business but says it will keep its call workers in New Zealand to support the growth in broadband customers.
AAPT will cut about 550 jobs by December nextyear by closing call centres in Victoria and Queensland.
But Telecom spokesman John Goulter said yesterday that call centre staff in New Zealand would not be cut in the "foreseeable future" because they were required to support a significant increase in customers signing up to broadband.
He said call centre staff would be shed in about five years when the company rolled out its new internet-based self-service platform, but not in "drastic numbers".
Across the Tasman, AAPT had been struggling and looking to reduce costs for some time.
Telecom had cut AAPT's value by $1.165 billion, he said, taking its worth to just $270 million as it battled falling retail prices and rising wholesale charges.
AAPT spokeswoman Emma Rogers said it had been working on a new self-service customer platform for the past 18 months. "It will drastically reduce the number of calls coming into our call centres."
AAPT told staff on Tuesday it was planning to shut down call centres in Bendigo and Robina and move operations to Sydney.
The Community and Public Service Union said workers had received assurances from AAPT that the call centres would remain open.
Last Friday, Telecom's chief financial officer, Marko Bogoievski, said it would aim to cut AAPT's operational costs by 50 per cent in its consumer and small enterprise divisions by December next year.
Telecom also announced an agreement with PowerTel which will see AAPT scale back and possibly dispense with its own network in Australia and rely more on PowerTel.
Telecom has about 1800 call centre staff in New Zealand, and 200 workers are outsourced to call centre providers Sitel and TeleTech.
Shares in Telecom closed down 10c yesterday at $4.62.
