South Australian premier Mike Rann has threatened to relocate the ETSA power company's Victorian call centre to Adelaide due to alleged negligence, according to the Bendigo Advertiser and call centres newsletter, callcentres.net.

The Bendigo call centre in regional Victoria, which services the customers of South Australian utility ETSA, is the subject of a state inquiry after thousands of callers were unable to get through during the extreme weather of January 20-22. Despite comments from ETSA CEO Lew Owens that he would not relocate the centre, Mr Rann reportedly said ETSA would not have a say in the matter if the inquiry determined it should move.

Damien Batey, a spokesman for the call centre, which services more than 1.6 million customers, including Victorian Powercor and Citipower clients, told reporters it was committed to staying in Bendigo for the long haul. "There's no question that we believe that's where the call centre should be," he said, adding that comments calling for the centre to relocate were unkind and ill informed. "The grade of service from the call centre is excellent and it's unfair to draw conclusions that the call centre should be relocated based on one bad weekend," he said.