Telstra has written off volunteer firefighters' mobile phone bills for December and January to provide free telecommunications services to help ease the burden facing those battling bushfires in 2020.
The offer of free data and phone calls for mobile bills comes after power and telco outages hit ravaged areas on New Year's Eve.
Telstra chief executive Andy Penn said in a statement there were special packages available to customers during emergencies and the new initiative was available on top of this assistance.
"We understand how important it is to reach out to friends and family during times of crisis, and we want to do all we can to help," Mr Penn said.
"We hope this will help ease some of the burden, particularly as many of these firefighters are defending their own communities."
Telstra brought in a new assistance package with free calls and TelstraAir Wi-Fi on local payphones on Tuesday for customers who have lost service in East Gippsland and the Northern Victorian areas of Corryong, Walwa, Towong, Cudgewa and Burrowye.
Adverse conditions have stopped Telstra employees from being able to get to some affected areas where telecommunications services have been hit due to power loss or fire damage.
"We are doing everything we can to get these communities back up and connected as quickly as possible but given the horrific conditions we have seen over the past few days, this may take some time," he said.