BellSouth Corp. may save as much as $275 million in IT costs over five years as the result of a plan to move its application development and maintenance work offshore.

The details of the offshore plan, called Project Horizon, were included in a BellSouth internal memorandum posted earlier this month on Internalmemos.com. The company confirmed that the memo is genuine.

Whether BellSouth moves ahead with its plan will depend on the success of a pilot program in India, said Elyse Hammett, a spokeswoman for the Atlanta-based company. That program will continue until early next month.

"Our current business case suggests moving 1/3 to 1/2 of our IT application work offshore. This equates to 600-900 positions over the next four years," the memo said.

BellSouth has outsourced its IT application and development work to Accenture Ltd., its long-standing partner. In explaining what will happen to workers, the company said that "as roles do transition," Accenture "will move people to other opportunities within their organization based on business need and skills."