Telstra inks outsourced training deal

In November, Telstra completed an internal review and announced a massive program to transform the carrier's operations and technologies. A Telstra spokesperson told ZDNet Australia on Friday that as part of the review, the company decided to outsource its training programme.

"We undertook and internal and external review of the training program... before [this announcement] we had a number of staff who provided that training in-house," said the spokesperson.

The training has been outsourced to Accenture because of the company's experience training technicians at other large telcos -- such as British Telecom -- the spokesperson said. The AU$67 million deal, which runs for five years, is one component of the overall AU$200 million training program announced in November.

Telstra services group managing director, Michael Rocca, said the massive restructure of the carrier would see an academy established to ensure field staff had the skills to build, run and maintain new equipment.

Staff from Telstra's new academy will be based in the company's existing Sydney and Melbourne training centres.