Sprint slashes 8,000 jobs

Beleaguered Sprint Nextel announced it will eliminate about 8,000 jobs in an effort to reduce internal and external labor costs by approximately $1.2 billion. The cuts are expected to be completed by March 31 and will impact all levels within the organization, although the impact will vary among geographic locations--Sprint adds that it has seen a recent reduction in customer care calls per subscriber and an overall increase in consumer satisfaction resulting from customer service improvements, and accordingly the majority of the headcount reductions will focus on non-customer facing divisions. Sprint noted that the job reduction total includes roughly 850 positions expected to be cut under a voluntary separation plan initiated late last year; the operator expects to recognize a charge in excess of $300 million in the first quarter of 2009 for severance and related costs associated with its actions.

Sprint Nextel will release its fourth quarter 2008 financial results on Feb. 19, earlier than previously announced. The company posted third-quarter losses of $326 million as subscriber totals dropped by 1.3 million, reducing Sprint's customer base to 50.5 million. By contrast, AT&T added 2 million subscribers in Q3 while Verizon Wireless signed up 1.5 million. According to Sprint, wireless service revenues for the quarter also declined 13 percent year-over-year and 3 percent sequentially to $6.8 billion--the operator blamed the year-over-year drop on reduced subscriber numbers and diminished ARPU, while the sequential decline was attributed to subscriber exodus. Sprint did cite strong takeup rates on bundled data services like its Simply Everything plan as well as continued growth in data cards.

For more on the Sprint job cuts:
- read this release

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