Retail giant Woolworths has confirmed it is currently reviewing its requirements for wide-ranging telecommunications services in a process that will test the fitness of its current contract with Telstra.

“We undertake periodic reviews of service providers and are currently reviewing out telecommunications requirements. As for further details — we don’t provide a running commentary on our tender processes,” a company spokesperson said today.

Computerworld has reported that the deal could be awarded to IBM. However, sizable corporate telecommunications deals of this nature are commonly awarded to large telcos like Optus and Telstra — for example, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in April 2009 inked a 10-year, up to $1 billion deal with Telstra, while ANZ picked Optus for a $500 million contract a month later.

Any new deal Woolworths signs would be expected to be similarly in the hundreds of millions of dollars — or at very least, in the tens of millions for a shorter-term arrangement.

Telstra has held the Woolworths work since 2003, when it won a five-year contract to service what was then the retail giant’s empire of more than 1,500 sites across the nation.

At the time Telstra nicked the mobiles side of Woolworths’ needs from Vodafone, and AAPT lost its deal to supply voice communications to the retailer.

Image credit: Agata Urbaniak, royalty free

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