Telstra has made 70 people redundant at its Sydney Trading Post call centre, citing the move away from print to online advertising.
The workers were told yesterday morning that call volume at the George Street centre, which handles classifieds for the newspaper's print version, had dropped by 50% recently.
Staff were told they would finish up next Tuesday and that calls would now be handled by a Melbourne call centre.
For more articles on recent job cuts, see our Jobs in Jeopardy index.
"This call centre is being closed because consumers are increasingly using the internet to directly place their classifieds advertisements rather than use call centre operators,'' a Telstra spokesman said. "For these affected employees, we are offering redundancy packages that are generous by industry standards, as well as counselling and job search programs.''
The Trading Post business was acquired by Telstra subsidiary Sensis for $636 million five years ago, but has suffered from falling revenues.
In February, Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo announced that the business would be moved across to Telstra's media division.
Sensis chief executive Bruce Akhurst, who has performed strongly in the role and who some insiders have tipped to be the new Telstra CEO, tried to staunch the flow by adding to Trading Post's existing online classifieds business a virtual auction house to rival eBay.
Telstra group managing director Kate McKenzie used a communications conference in Sydney today to attack the Government for over-regulating the broadband industry in cities in favour of Telstra's competitors, and ignoring the need for competition in rural areas.
Ms McKenzie's speech comes days before The Federal Government announces who has won the contract to build a national broadband network (NBN). The builder will be forced to use Telstra infrastructure, after the telco giant was knocked out of the process.
"If we are concerned about the issue of the 'digital divide' this is an area that warrants attention and would be a better focus for activity, than responding to self-interested complaints about non-existent problems,'' Ms McKenzie said.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said last month that it was suing Telstra for allegedly denying customers such as Optus access to seven local exchanges in lucrative metropolitan areas.
Telstra also said today that it will boost the speed of its Velocity fibre-to-the-home broadband network, another plank of its plan to tackle to the NBN, albeit a small one.
The network has been rolled out to "greenfields'' housing estates, and currently only services 3100 homes.
doakes@theage.com.au
The Age
