Telstra will hire 1000 new field technicians in coming months to cope with NBN-related work and reduce the time customers spend waiting for a fault to be repaired or a new connection.

About one third of the new hires will be full time Telstra staff, and the rest sub-contractors to ISGM, which manages the contracting workforce. This brings Telstra's total technician work force to about 6000 people across Australia.

Telstra will hire 1000 new technicians, with one third directly employed by the company, ahead of millions more households connecting to the NBN. Credit:Robert Gunstone

"We know that sometimes the experience our customers can have when they need a fault fixed or a new service installed can improve and we are building up our resources to do just that," said its executive director customer service delivery, Brian Harcourt.

Customers expect Telstra to install new services and fix faults as quickly as possible after a series of mishaps and outages that plagued its network this year.