UK Telecom Company BT Plans To Shed Up To 55,000 Jobs

ON THURSDAY, the U.K. telecom operator BT Group announced that it wants to reduce its staff by up to 55,000 employees by the end of the decade and replace some of those positions with artificial intelligence.

In its most recent earnings report, BT, which employs 130,000 people overall—staff and contractors combined—stated that by 2030, it would have between 75,000 and 90,000 fewer workers.

CEO Philip Jansen predicted that BT Group would have a much smaller staff and lower cost base by the end of the 2020s.

The “new BT Group” will have a more promising future and a leaner organization.

Companies in the tech and telecom sectors have been laying off employees as the industry goes through a complex restructuring due to sluggish economic development and rising inflation.

Days before, the European and African telecom carrier Vodafone, based in the UK, announced it would be letting go of 11,000 employees as part of a significant reorganization.

British Telecom-formerly, a state monopoly known as BT, will eliminate around 10,000 jobs due to digitization, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) application to its operations.

Jansen says, “That’s about using technology to do things much more efficiently.”

In addition, 15,000 jobs are being lost in constructing 5G mobile networks and fiber-optic broadband, as well as 10,000 jobs in maintenance and repair.

BT won’t require as many employees to develop or manage those networks once deployed.

“All the equipment is newer, simpler, more adaptable, and more agile.

Additionally, according to Jansen, we have AI and all the data necessary to build self-healing networks. We will therefore greatly benefit from increased efficiency and reduced expenses, which is why we are confident we won’t require all of these responsibilities in the future.

BT will cooperate with labor partners as it made job cuts and rely on attrition, according to Jansen, who estimated that 5,000 jobs would be lost through “conventional restructuring.”