Sprint to axe 1,100 jobs

Competitive market blamed

By Tim Richardson • Get more from this author

Posted in Financial News, 17th June 2004 09:45 GMT

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Sprint is culling 1,100 jobs in response to being squeezed by the "highly competitive" long distance market.

Some 850 jobs will be lost from the US telco's Sprint Business Solutions (SBS) unit, while 250 corporate jobs supporting SBS will also be scrubbed out - including IT staff. Workers will be told that they've been singled out for the chop by the middle of July.

Sprint said the job cuts were necessary to "further align company resources with customer segments and to maintain a cost structure that reflects highly competitive long-distance market conditions." Execs also plan to re-organise the business to make it more efficient.

Said SBS president Howard Janzen: "While we are seeing growing customer acceptance of our integrated portfolio and experiencing strong wireless growth in particular, we continue to see market pressures in our traditional long-distance business.

"Since announcing our new structure last fall, we have worked hard to reduce costs and improve our processes. This action reflects these ongoing efforts to deploy our resources in a manner that maximizes value for our customers and our shareholders."

In November last year Sprint confirmed that 2,000 jobs would be lost. Two months earlier the company signalled its intention to reduce total operating expenses by five to seven per cent over the next three years, generating more than $1bn in savings a year. ®