Australian incumbent Telstra has announced plans to implement real-time bill tracking as part of its new “Digital First” strategy.
The operator will revamp its system to remove the 24-48 hour delay before billing information is updated on a user's dashboard, Telstra CEO David Thodey said in a speech covered by the Australian Financial Review.
During the speech to the Israeli Chamber of Commerce, Thodey said the company wants to break out of its role of being the slow-moving incumbent and transform into a global technology company.
Thodey also used the speech to reveal that Telstra plans to install GPS trackers on its field technicians' vans, so that customers experiencing service faults can track their arrival in real-time.
This last announcement did not go down well with Australia's Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union (CEPU), which represents a large number of Telstra's workers.
The union's divisional president told the paper that Telstra employees are likely to object to any more stringent GPS tracking, and said the union was “very angry about the proposal and even more angry that there’s been no consultation with us about it.”