'NTL, Chorus may shed up to 350 jobs

Cable groups NTL Ireland and Chorus have announced plans to shed up to 350 jobs and may shut an NTL call centre in Waterford as they strive to compete better with rivals such as Sky.

Management of UPC Ireland, the new parent company of both NTL and Chorus, told staff yesterday that redundancies will take effect between September and March. UPC Ireland was formed when Liberty Global acquired NTL Ireland last year for €325 million and combined it with its existing Irish cable operation, Chorus.

"The primary focus of the reorganisation is to consolidate both operations under one single brand and become more competitive," a UPC spokeswoman said.

A year ago, the companies denied the existence of a "merger business plan", detailed in The Irish Times, that would see the reduction of up to 185 jobs and the closure of facilities such as the Waterford call centre.

UPC Ireland said yesterday, though, that it may be able to create as many as 140 new positions "eventually," once it achieves growth in certain areas of the business.

It declined to say whether the 135 people employed at its Waterford facility will be made redundant or would be employed elsewhere in the group. UPC Ireland currently employs 980 people.

"All that will become apparent as discussions with employees and union representatives progress," the spokeswoman said. "The consultation process only started today."

UPC Ireland said in a statement the redundancies would help eliminate overlaps and inefficiencies within the newly combined group and that some activities would be swapped between NTL and Chorus.

NTL's main franchise areas are Dublin, Galway and Waterford, while Chorus offers retail analogue and digital pay television services for residential customers everywhere but Dublin, Galway, Waterford and some surrounding areas.

"The aim is, as much as possible, to find appropriate alternatives within the new structure for those employees affected but a certain number of redundancies cannot be excluded," the company said in a statement.

News of the redundancies comes less than two months after NTL UK, which merged with rival Telewest, announced about 6,000 job losses.

UPC Ireland is ultimately owned by Liberty Global, which is based in Denver, Colorado and controlled by American cable tycoon John Malone. Because Mr Malone also owns shares in News Corporation, which owns a significant stake in BSkyB, major competition issues were triggered by the acquisition of NTL Ireland. BSkyB is the main digital television rival to Chorus and NTL in the Irish market.

NTL and Chorus had 313,200 analogue television subscribers and 162,000 digital subscribers by the end of March, with the remainder using MMDS systems.

The company said it added 15,700 more TV customers compared to the same period last year. The number of analogue subscribers dropped by 8,300 in the three months to 313,200, but digital subscribers grew by 21,000 to 162,000.

The combined company claims to have 32,000 broadband customers, and is introducing new residential broadband speeds for Chorus customers this summer.