Telekom to cut more jobs in Germany

Germany's Deutsche Telekom has been reported to be planning more job cuts in addition to those already announced a while ago. According to a newspaper, layoffs will primarily affect its overhead segment. Deutsche Telekom of Germany on Thursday was reported to be preparing more job cuts domestically over the next couple of months. The business newspaper Handelsblatt claimed the country's telecommunications giant was planning to axe 1,200 jobs within the framework of a larger restructuring program. The daily said the envisaged cuts would affect about 10 percent of the company's overhead division, including marketing, controlling and administration. The jobs in question would be gone by June 30, 2012, the newspaper reported. Efficiency drive The newspaper said Deutsche Telekom expected to save some 100 million euros ($131 million) annually because of the cuts – money it would invest areas strategically important for the firm. Telekom officials were quoted as emphasizing that the company would need to put more resources into broadband infrastructure, mobile Internet services and IP-based telecom networks. According to the newspaper, some of employees affected would move into the firm's operative business segments, while others would be sent into early retirement or receive severance payments. Simultaneously to the cuts in the overhead business, Deutsche Telekom is in the middle of realizing its "Shape Headquarters" project under which 40 percent of jobs in the company's headquarters in Bonn will be axed by 2015, affecting some 1,300 people.