Photo: Dean Lewins / AAP

The national contact hub will be Telstra’s third in Australia, connecting with existing centres in Sydney and Melbourne.

The telco’s Group Executive for Consumer and Small Business, Michael Ackland, said the two established centres received around nine million calls last financial year – roughly 24,000 per day – with the new hub “allowing us the flexibility to bring in extra people during peak periods, such as a major incident or natural disaster, or to upscale in the future if necessary”.

The contact centre will be based in Adelaide – although Telstra won’t reveal the exact location for security reasons – and will create around 45 local jobs. There is potential to negotiate future project funding from the Commonwealth Department of Communications and the Arts.

It will operate 24/7 “once fully deployed”.

The centre will deal with Triple-0 callers from around Australia, with the national service designed to ensure the first available agent answers as quickly as possible, irrespective of location.

“Capability, capacity and reliability are key during an emergency or a disaster,” Ackland said.

“People in their hour of need expect a reliable and time effective emergency call service and opening an additional contact centre provides multiple layers of assurance for the community.

“Our strong existing local presence and available infrastructure made Adelaide the ideal location to set up our third point of contact.”

Ackland said Telstra had been operating the national service for more than 55 years and “take our responsibilities as the service provider for Triple Zero extremely seriously”.

The new contact centre is expected to open in the first half of 2019, with recruitment beginning in the new year.

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