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T-Mobile US has announced that it will cut 5,000 jobs in the US, reducing its 71,000-person workforce by 7%.
The job cuts will take place over the next five weeks, and will include both corporate and back-office roles, although the cuts will not impact the firm’s retail and customer care divisions.
“Impacted roles are primarily duplicative to other roles, or may be aligned to systems or processes that are changing, or may not fit with our current company priorities. Some areas of the business will be implementing more centralized models where they can improve efficiency and effectiveness and save costs. We’re also taking opportunities to build bigger, broader people manager roles with deeper spans and fewer layers, to provide longer-term growth opportunities. At the same time, we’ll also be decreasing our reliance and spend on external workers and resources,” said CEO Mike Sievert in an email to staff.
“Today’s changes are all about getting us efficiently focused on a finite set of winning strategies, so that we can continue to out-pace our competitors and have the financial capability to deliver a differentiated network and customer experience to a continually growing customer base, while simultaneously meeting our obligations to our shareholders,” he added.
In the release of its Q2 reports last month, T-Mobile reported profits of $2.2 billion, up from a $108 million loss for the same period last year. Furthermore, the firm announced a gain of 760,000 postpaid mobile customers, its highest increase in the quarter for eight years, and the most in the US mobile industry.
Considering the firm’s recent success, laying off so many employees may appear questionable, especially given the company’s promises of job creation surrounding the company’s merger with Sprint. Sivert added that “the time to challenge the status quo and write the next chapter, is WHILE we are still successful. That’s how we sustain it.”
It is estimated that the firm will incur a charge of around $450 million as a result of the move.
Upon the announcement on Thursday, shares were down 2%.
T-Mobile’s largest rivals are also undergoing major workforce reductions in recent years; AT&T has cut roughly 45,000 in the last two years, while Verizon has cut around 18,000 in a similar time frame.
Join the discussion around America’s changing telecoms market at next year’s operators in discussion at Connected America 2024 live in Dallas, Texas
Also in the news:
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Brazil making rapid 5G progress but challenges remain on the horizon
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Chinese tech giant Huawei has signed a deal with Sweden’s Ericsson to renew their patent cross-licensing agreement.
The deal, which was last renewed in January 2016, allows each company to access each other’s patented technologies deemed vital to product standards set by 3GPP, ITU, IEEE, and IETF, covering 3G, 4G, and 5G cellular technologies.
“We need to pay Ericsson and Ericsson need to pay Huawei, so there is some net payment from one company to the other company,” explained Emil Zhang, Head of European Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) at Huawei.
Financial details of the deal have not been disclosed.
“This agreement demonstrates the commitment of both parties that intellectual property should be respected and rewarded, and that leading technological innovations should be shared across the industry,” said Christina Petersson, Ericsson’s Chief Intellectual Property Officer.
“We are delighted to reach a long-term global cross-licensing agreement with Ericsson,” said Alan Fan, Head of Huawei’s Intellectual Property Department.
“As major contributors of standard essential patents (SEPs) for mobile communication, the companies recognize the value of each other’s intellectual property, and this agreement creates a stronger patent environment. It demonstrates the commitment both parties have forged that intellectual property should be properly respected and protected.”
Under the agreement made in 2016, Huawei would make “ongoing royalty payments” to Ericsson based on the sale of products using the Swedish vendor’s patents.
Today, Ericsson says the new deal will contribute to it increasing its IPR revenues for 2023 to approximately SEK 11 billion ($1 billion). Huawei, similarly, has been a major contributor to mainstream ICT standards for over 20 years, including cellular, Wi-Fi, and multimedia codecs. Last year, the company filed 4,505 patents to the European Patent Office, the most of any company.
Patent licencing is a major revenue stream for the company, which reportedly made between $1.2 billion and $1.3 billion from licencing between 2019 and 2021. Since then, the company has only increased its research efforts, claiming to have spent $125 billion on R&D in the last decade.
This revenue stream has not been without controversy, however. Back in May, it was announced that US-based network equipment maker ADVA Optical Networking would sue Huawei for charging “grossly excessive” fees for the use of their intellectual property , and asking ADVA to pay for patents not required by international standards. ADVA argue that Huawei is using its dominant position in the IP area to apply disproportionate influence over the market.
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Also in the news:
Huawei’s secret semiconductor strategy to skirt sanctions
Battle for Ethiopia’s mobile money market begins as Safaricom’s M-Pesa takes on TeleBirr
What’s in a name? 6G Internet falls foul of advertising regulator over consumer confusion
Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
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Keep up-to-date with all the latest news, articles, event and product updates posted on Developing Telecoms.
Subscribe to our FREE weekly email newsletters for the latest telecom info in developing and emerging markets globally.
This Industry Viewpoint was authored by Mike Hawley, Head of Mobility Management Packet Core R&D, Cloud and Network Services at Nokia
Communications service providers (CSPs) take a pragmatic view when it comes to core developments. Beyond the fascinating technology, CSPs want results that meet their end goals.
Generally, there are three goal areas that drive these conversations: … [visit site to read more]
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Brazil’s road to 5G has been a bumpy one, full of delays, regulatory clashes, and spectrum clearing issues.
But now, just over one year since standalone 5G services were first switched on in the nation’s capital of Brasilia, the nation’s mobile network operators are surging ahead with their infrastructure deployments, with coverage reportedly now reaching almost 46% of the country’s population.
According to figures published by Brazilian consultancy firm Teleco, population coverage for 5G in the 3.5GHz band reached 45.7%, with Vivo covering 40.2%, Claro 39.7%, TIM Brasil 36.8%, and Algar 0.7%.
This encompasses 180 municipalities around the country as of July, up from just eight the same time last year.
The coverage has been achieved via the deployment of 14,796 5G base stations, almost a thousand of which had been deployed between June and July this year.
Achieving this level of coverage in such a short span of time is no small feat. The GSMA recently forecast that Brazil would only reach 47% population coverage by 2025, increasing to 84% by 2030, hence the country is already proceeding far faster than anticipated.
In the same report, the GSMA expected 5G subscribers to increase to 36.2 million by 2025 and 179 million by 2030. As of July, the country currently has just over 10 million 5G subscribers.
“The growing coverage of 5G networks in Brazil should drive take-up of the service, which accounted for around 3% of connections at the end of 2022. 5G adoption will also be supported by the increased availability of 5G smartphones. For example, TIM claimed in September 2022 that 75% of devices on sale in its stores were 5G-ready,” read the GSMA report.
Naturally, this is all very positive for the Brazilian mobile sector, reflecting a group of operators highly committed to modernising their networks and unlocking new services for customers.
Whether the operators can maintain the pace of this rollout, however, is a different story. As is always the case with infrastructure deployments, the most commercially viable areas – typically the largest cities – will be covered first, typically leaving more expensive and complicated hard-to-reach areas for last. Extending 5G coverage to these areas economically represents a challenge even in highly urbanised countries, but in Brazil – where various estimates put the rural population at between 24% and 46% of the total population – reaching the upper percentiles of population coverage will be almost impossible.
In addition to this rural challenge, it is also worth noting that Brazil is notorious for its outdated municipal legislation, which can lead to delays in deploying antennae even in some of the country’s largest cities. Operators have long called for clearer and more uniform rules regarding site deployment, but it is unlikely legislation will be introduced in time to simply the majority of the 5G rollout process.
To conclude, great progress so far for Brazilian 5G, but there are still many challenges to overcome down the road.
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Also in the news:
Dish seeks extension for purchase of T-Mobile’s low-band spectrum
Battle for Ethiopia’s mobile money market begins as Safaricom’s M-Pesa takes on TeleBirr
What’s in a name? 6G Internet falls foul of advertising regulator over consumer confusion
A new transatlantic option, an international edge expansion, some network tech as a service news, and a vendor deployment in a less travelled region. … [visit site to read more]
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