Reported by The Guardian
Virgin Media O2 is to cut thousands of UK jobs in an £800m cost-cutting drive as the telecommunications company aims to tackle its £22bn debt pile.
VMO2, which is jointly owned by the British-Dutch-American telecoms company Liberty Global and Spain’s Telefónica , said £300m of the savings target will come from job cuts that will reduce the company’s employee wage bill by 30% over the next two years.
The company did not specify how many jobs this will equate to, but it could be as many as 25% of its 16,000 workforce.
More from the original report
The company, which said that most of the job losses will come from non-customer facing roles, said it intends to increase the use of AI tools in areas including customer service, network planning and fault management.
double quotation mark While we will give a fuller update on the new strategic plan in the coming months, we are already progressing and making difficult decisions to prioritise investments and reduce costs which includes the size of our workforce.
Standing still and doing what we’ve always done is not an option and while many of these decisions are tough, they are necessary for our future success and growth. Virgin Media O2 must evolve, and the action needed to make that happen starts now.