00:00 It's focused on what Telstra calls its enterprise business, which is basically its services
00:06 to big corporations.
00:09 And a lot of these it sounds like it's decided it's not competitive with some of the tech
00:14 giants out there that are providing similar IT services, potentially at a lower cost,
00:20 and has said in its statements and in the press conference that Vicky Brady held that
00:26 a lot of – will work with partners to shift some of these big business customers away
00:31 from Telstra and onto different providers of the services.
00:35 She did emphasise that these won't affect in-store service.
00:40 Telstra is still buying back a lot of its retail outlets and bringing them in-house,
00:44 and she said it's still continuing with its on-shoring of call centre operations.
00:49 And what's been the reaction so far to this?
00:52 Look, from the market analysts, it was pretty expected because Telstra's had this multi-year
00:59 plan, Telstra 2025, to reduce costs by the end of the coming financial year.
01:05 This was sort of in the mid-range of cost cutting they expected, and jobs are obviously
01:10 one of the big ways companies can cut costs.
01:13 But politically, it's obviously bad news.
01:16 So we're seeing the employment market deteriorate, unemployment ticking back above 4%, and Treasurer
01:22 Jim Chalmers said the Federal Government will be watching Telstra very closely to see how
01:27 these changes are implemented.
01:30 I think this is a very distressing day for a lot of people who've received this bad
01:35 news today from Telstra.
01:38 And we're thinking of all of the families who are impacted by these big job cuts at
01:43 a major Australian employer.
01:46 We need to make sure that the services don't suffer as a consequence of these changes.
01:53 And we will be seeking advice from the ACCC about some of the claims that Telstra is making
01:59 about their new pricing strategy and the role of the NBN.
02:05 Michael, Telstra has also announced changes to their post-paid mobile plans.
02:10 What's the significance of that?
02:11 Yes, so many Telstra customers would remember a 7% roughly increase in line with the CPI,
02:18 the inflation measure that got passed through last year.
02:21 Well Telstra has now announced that it's de-linking its post-paid mobile pricing from the Consumer
02:27 Price Index.
02:28 Of course, the Consumer Price Index is now about half of what it was last year.
02:33 So again, a lot of the Telco analysts that are looking at this say even though Telstra
02:37 has committed, Vicky Brady said expressly there will be no price increase in July this
02:42 year, but the Telco analysts are expecting that Telstra will put through a price increase
02:46 later this year or perhaps early next year and that it may be much higher than the Consumer
02:52 Price Index and that's why they've chosen to de-link the two.
02:55 Thanks, Michael.
02:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]
