Chorus' staff are mostly employed managing its networks and providing support to customers, with the job of building and maintaining the networks assigned to contractors.

Network company Chorus says "tens" of staff will lose their jobs in a restructure.



The Wellington-based firm employed 1032 permanent staff as of the end of June.



A source said chief executive Kate McKenzie had told staff in an email that the company needed to become a smaller business and that the cuts would take effect shortly before Christmas, on December 8.



Chorus spokesman Nathan Beaumont confirmed the restructure but said speculation that as many as 200 jobs might go was incorrect.

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As Chorus was still consulting on the changes, it was not possible to give exact numbers, he said.

SUPPLIED Spark managing director Simon Moutter is reporting positive progress in its search for efficiencies.

The source said the staff changes would mean Chorus would provide less "proactive" support for its internet provider customers, providing them instead with help only when they asked for it.

However, Beaumont said the cuts had flowed from the deployment of new IT systems that integrated Chorus' systems "directly with retail service providers".

"Customers get a better experience and we are able to streamline our operations. Unfortunately that means we will not need as many people as we have now."

Overall satisfaction with UFB installations was at a record high "with very large volumes", he added.

Job numbers may also be coming down at Spark.

Managing director Simon Moutter said it achieved a 31 per cent year-on-year drop in the number of incoming calls to its contact centres in October.

That was thanks to automation and its move away from a troubled email outsourcing arrangement with Yahoo which caused customers to ring in with complaints.

But Moutter said job reductions that flowed from the efficiency gains were likely to be achieved through natural attrition rather than redundancies.

Since contact centre employees tended to stay only a relatively short time in their roles, it would simply be a case of Spark advertising fewer vacancies, he said.

NZX-listed Chorus is due to finish laying ultrafast broadband in 192 cities and towns by the end of 2022.

While it will still have work to do after that coordinating the connection of homes and maintaining its networks, the company has begun to look for future opportunities.

This month it agreed to wire up all the classrooms in 10 schools in the Far North and Gisborne with gigabit fibre-optic access points, as part of an agreement with Crown-owned education technology company N4L.

It is more common for schools to have a single gigabit connection, shared within each school through wifi.

Chorus and N4L are also running a trial with Haeata Community Campus in Christchurch that will extend the school's internet service out into the homes of students.

In a wider play, Chorus has expressed interest in installing 5G access points on its UFB network and wholesaling them to telcos, once the next version of mobile technology arrives in New Zealand.