After lamenting Telstra's "dramatically" growing retail and wholesale expenses, and the limited potential of its existing PSTN infrastructure, Trujillo said IT has "added a lot of complexity and cost".

"Obviously our network and IT infrastructure and to some extent architecture has been affected by an original design that started decades ago that was built for a purpose different to the kinds of service capabilities that are being offered today," Trujillo told an audience of shareholders in Sydney.

"And as a result we a have had a lot of things added onto our networks and our IT infrastructure has added a lot of complexity and with complexity comes cost."

Telstra is looking at networks, systems and processes, and allocating resources within the business "because that is as important as any company making the right bets and betting on the right technology and people".

"When you look at the infrastructure we have today we have too much of everything," Trujillo said. "We have multiple networks, multiple fixed-line networks, multiple wireless networks. We have over 1200 systems embedded in our business today [and] we have over 150 call centers."