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Orange's new broom in jobs clearout
Evening Standard 4 Jun 2008
Orange UK, the French-owned mobile operator, is to cut up to 450 management and administration jobs across the country as new chief executive Tom Alexander launches his strategy for the business.
Alexander - who made £6 million when Virgin Mobile, which he founded, was bought by NTL - said he wanted to shift the focus of the business to customers and grow its High Street presence.
He plans to add 60 Orange stores to the current 338, and eventually to pull out of Indian call centres. These moves should create around 500 what he called front-line jobs.
Alexander also announced a boardroom shake-up, which he said was "designed to stop duplication within the organisation and ensure we are agile and able to deliver and react quickly to customer needs".
Orange will build an extra 450 masts to fill in gaps on its 2G network while accelerating the roll-out of its 3G network, bringing faster mobile TV and internet to its customers more quickly.
