Up to 300 jobs to go at Orange

Mobile phone group Orange is set to axe between 200 and 300 jobs in the UK, it emerged today.

The group is understood to be planning the redundancies in its network and technical systems operations, which have bases in Bristol and elsewhere around the UK.

Orange confirmed it was planning “a small number of redundancies”, but said it was too early to give figures.

A spokesman for the company, which has 13,500 UK employees, said the cuts would not affect call centre or shop staff.

It had started to inform people of the changes today, he added.

“These are only proposals at the moment and are not related to call centres or other customer-facing roles,” the spokesman said.

“It is part of an ongoing process to ensure the business continues to be focused on its customers.”

French state-owned telecommunications group France Telecom owns Orange, which has operations in 19 countries worldwide.

The redundancies are part of a new strategy which the company announced about a year ago under former chief executive Sol Trujillo, who has since left the group.

Mr Trujillo set out plans to make the company’s products more user-friendly and to increase usage of non-voice-related mobile phone services.

In February, Orange said it had boosted revenues by 9% last year to €17.9bn as 11% more customers signed up for its services.