Telefonica approved a sweeping redundancy plan affecting 5,500 jobs
BT, another historic company, cut 5,000 jobs. The same was true for its German counterpart, Deutsche Telekom, which let go of 3,300 employees in the third quarter over the course of a year, as well as the Scandinavian operator TeliaSonera, which announced plans to cut up to 3,000 jobs in Sweden.
Nokia, which announced 14,000 job cuts over three years in October 2023, asked France in November to bear 427 layoffs and warned Germany it would close a site employing 700 people in Munich by 2030. Ericsson, its Swedish rival, also planned to reduce its headcount in France by 130.
Infrastructure like this is one of the things that shouldn’t be driven by a profit motive because the positive externalities greatly exceed the potential profit loss from overbuilding. But what can you do, capitalism.