"Unfortunately, we're in the business where prices only go down, not up, so we would need to have a cost structure that's appropriate to our operations" in Australia, Chua said after announcing third-quarter results which showed profit at southeast Asia's largest telecommunications firm fell 8.3 percent, more sharply than market forecasts. (Read more: SingTel Third Quarter Net Profit Falls 8.3% ) "So we would obviously look at how we would do things differently, how we could do things more efficiently and as a result if we could free out headcount, we would do that," she added. SingTel's lower profit was mainly due to exceptional charges of S$67 million ($54 million) for the restructuring of Optus' workforce and accelerated depreciation charges at Philippine associate Globe Telecom's network modernization.