Massive job cut looms in Deutsche Telekom, says report

Some 35,000 additional jobs are reportedly threatened in German telecom giant Deutsche Telekom, on top of the tens of thousands already being lost, a German paper, quoted by an AFP report said.

The AFP report said the weekly Der Spiegel cited 'internal calculations' within the company, which employed some 249,000 people at the end of 2006, 89,000 of them outside Germany.

Der Spiegel said Deutsche Telekom boss Rene Obermann refused to comment on the figure, while stressing 'the need to adapt and restructure' the group he has headed for the past year.

Deutsche Telekom is Europe's biggest telecom group, but it has had problems in its core German market because of heightened competition and has lost large numbers of clients to rivals, the AFP report said.

The carrier is in the process of cutting 32,000 jobs by the end of 2008 and has hived off another 50,000 in the service sector, it said.

The AFP report quoted Obermann as saying that that the group would step up investments in developing nations where the telecommunciations sector was booming.

Earlier this year Obermann had said the firm had no immediate plans to invest in emerging markets, and was accused of missing the boat compared with its rivals, the report further said.