Telstra is recruiting 1,000 technicians to its field workforce to improve customer service by cutting installing and fault repair times and help with people switching to the national broadband network.
Brian Harcourt, Telstra's executive director of customer service delivery, said the new staff will have the "dual benefit" of getting through more work and freeing up our more experienced technicians to deal with more complex tasks.
Just over half of the 1,000 new staff will be based in NSW and the ACT, where there are large populations and strong demand for NBN services, he said.
About two-thirds of the new hires will be sub-contractors through workforce supply partner, ISGM, and the remainder will be Telstra employees, Mr Harcourt told AAP.
Mr Harcourt said about 140 customer technicians have already started working in the field, and around 600 are in training, which generally takes up to 17 weeks. The remainder will come on board over the next few months.
The 1,000 new staff will take its total customer technicians workforce to 6,000 from 5,000, Mr Harcourt said.
