After series of outages, Telstra attempts to win back customers by investing $3 billion in networks

Telecom giant Telstra, tapped to run Australia’s national cancer screening register, will invest $3 billion over the next three years in network. The moves aims to win back customers who left in droves because of frequent network outages in its broadband and mobile services.

Andy Penn, chief executive of Telstra, says that in upgrading its network, the company would deliver significant customer benefits and reinforce its market differentiation over the long term. At the same time, it would bring business benefits such as capital efficiency, lower operating costs and hiked revenue.

“Our customers and our networks are our biggest assets. We must invest to set new standards and deliver excellent experiences for our customers,” Australian Financial Review quotes Penn.

He admits work needs to be done to improve Telstra’s widespread outages which had plagued it internet and mobile customers. “We know that customers expect more from us as their reliance on smart devices continues to grow,” Penn said.

Also on Wednesday, Penn reported a 36 percent increase in full-year profit for Telstra to $5.8 billion. A $1.8-billion sale of shares in Autohome, an online car trading company in China, boosted Telstra’s profit. The healthy financial status of Telstra led to the telecom giant returning $1.5 billion to shareholders via a share buy-back.

As a result, stockholders would enjoy higher full-year dividends of 31 cents per share from 30.5 cents the previous year, reports ABC.

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Source: Telstra