Telstra

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Australian government owned telecom company Telstra is outsourcing more information technology work to India.

The beleaguered telecommunication giant is reportedly outsourced work from Sensis directories division to India as a cost-cutting measure.

The print directories project has been outsourced to Amdocs, which has designing staff both in India and Australia, and would likely affect scores of Sensis jobs.

Telstra share prices have tumbled in recent days as the John Howard government has decided against divesting in the largest telecommunication company in the region. Sensis' outsourcing move has come at a point when once lucrative print directories business has begun to decline.

Beside outsourcing to India and other businesses, Sensis directories has also made design staff redundant.

''We are pretty cost-focused and have been since the strategy last November,'' Sensis spokesman Stephen Ronchi has told News Corporation newspapers.

''Overall staff numbers have remained stable -- about 3500 employees across Sensis,'' he said.

''We believe that Telstra's target of 12 per cent revenue growth for Sensis over the next five years remains a stretch in the absence of significant acquisitions,'' Macquarie Bank analysts Gary Pinge and Andrew Levy have been quoted as saying in a The Australian newspaper article.

''A key trend within the Sensis business was declining print growth, offset by strong growth in the online segment,'' the statement further reads.

The print directories project has been outsourced to Amdocs which has designing staff both in India and Australia. The Indian office of Amdocs would be primarily handling new Sensis customers, according to a Telstra statement.

The latest outsourcing move would definitely attract criticism from various lobby groups pitched against 'off-shoring' or sending Australian jobs overseas.

Telstra had first outsourced to IT work to India in 2004 as a part of the overhaul of its contract system with IT services providers. Around 400 landline billing jobs were affected by the move which was slammed by various trade unions and political groups representing Telstra workers.

According to unconfirmed reports, Telstra is also believed to be talking to Indian IT multinational Wipro and may award them few contracts in the near future.

Telstra has been defending moves to outsource to India on the grounds that two of its main competitors in Australian telecom industry, Optus and Hutchison, have also sent huge IT workload to India to cut spiraling costs.