24th February 2011 -- A mobile phone company which recently slashed jobs in the region has reassured staff it has no plans to make further redundancies despite it suffering a drop in earnings.

Everything Everywhere, formed from the merger of Orange and T-Mobile, has denied reports suggesting it will axe thousands more positions as it continues to cut costs across the combined operation.

At the end of last year the firm announced it was shedding 1,200 jobs, including about 100 at its contact centre in Darlington, as some credit control and accounting roles were shifted overseas.

It said it was on track to deliver £3.5bn of planned savings by 2014 but a spokesman confirmed that there are no plans for any further staffing changes.

Having announced in September that it was cutting 7.5 per cent of its 16,000 strong workforce, the firm said turnover in the nine months to December 31 was £5.3bn, down from £5.4bn in the same period a year earlier.

Everything Everywhere, owned jointly by Deutsche Telekom and France Telecom, has more than 27 million customers in the UK and employs 16,000 staff, including about 5,000 in the North-East.

Everything Everywhere grew its contract base but lost prepay users during its first nine months as a company as it migrated users onto longer contracts. It added 300,000 to its contracted customer base in the three months to December 31 and 752,000 over the nine-month period, up 33 per cent on a year earlier. However, it lost 187,000 prepay users in the final quarter of 2010, taking its total base to 27,984 down slightly from 28,175 a year earlier.

The rise of smartphones was underlined as the firm revealed that the gizmo-packed devices, which includes Apple iPhones and Google Android handsets, now account for 82 per cent of pay monthly connections compared to 50 per cent for same quarter last year.

Chief executive Tom Alexander claimed 2010 had been "a year of achievement" for Everything Everywhere. He added: "We continued the rapid integration of the new company, completing a company-wide restructuring and maintained good commercial momentum throughout, with improved retention and growth on our contract customer base.

"Our continued cost management has allowed us to invest in contract customer growth across both brands. The strategy for T-Mobile was to focus on costs and profitability, in contrast to Oranges customer growth strategy; these strategies are now aligned, with a continued focus on costs coupled with a drive to invest in contract customer growth on both brands, as evidenced by the performance in the fourth quarter."

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, news correspondent
Source: http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk