Europe's largest telco, Deutsche Telekom, is planning a massive reduction of managers and staff at its German headquarters in Bonn. The company expects to cut up to 1,600 positions over the next three years out of a total 4,000 staff based at the office currently.
The company said that the job cuts are partly due to the planned sale of its T-Mobile USA subsidiary to AT&T, even though the deal is still awaiting US regulatory approval.
This fresh round of headcount reductions is part of Deutsche Telekom's austerity programme called "Save for Service." So far, this effort, which was introduced in 2007, is reported to have saved over €8 billion and is planned to continue until late 2015.
Elsewhere, Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann is attracting criticism for focusing on reviving the company's European business while letting T-Mobile USA fall behind its more aggressive rivals, especially since T-Mobile USA remains an independent company until the deal is approved.
T-Mobile USA is estimated by UniCredit analyst Thomas Friedrich to have lost 350,000 contract subscribers in its second quarter, bringing total losses since the final quarter of 2010 to more than 1 million subscribers. T-Mobile USA is now thought to have a contract customer base of around 25.5 million.
For more:
- see this Bloomberg article
- see this separate Bloomberg article
- see this DW World article
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