Cable & Wireless to Shed 30,000 Customers

Cable & Wireless provided an update on its restructuring plans, saying its UK business plans to reduce its customer base from a total of approximately 30,000 customers to about 3,000 large corporate customers and public institutions. The company hopes that concentrating on fewer, larger customers, and by reducing the complexity in its products, systems and processes, it will be able to increase its margins from 33% today to 40%. To reduce costs, the company plans to cut its UK headcount (C&W UK and Energis) from more than 5,500 to between 2,500 and 3,500.



The company confirmed its commitment to deploying a next generation network and has allocated GBP 50 million in CAPEX in 2005/6. The pace of deployment will depend on customer uptake. The company is still pursing an unbundled local loop strategy and has a target of 900 unbundled exchanges by September.



A webcast is available on the company site.

http://www.cw.com