Mobile phone giant Vodafone today announced it is cutting around 500 jobs in the UK as part of efforts to reduce costs.
The cuts to the 10,000-strong UK workforce come as the group looks for £1 billion sterling of cost savings worldwide by March 2011.
Vodafone has seen conditions worsen in the UK and other key markets as the recession has deepened, hitting sales of handsets. Vodafone employs about 71,000 people around the world.
Today's cuts will not affect its Irish job numbers, although the company announced 150 job losses last December.
The company had told staff and unions that it hoped to make the redundancies through a voluntary redundancy programme.
Vodafone Ireland currently employs around 1,400 staff, and has its headquarters in Sandyford, Dublin.
The economic downturn has hit telecoms companies less hard than many other sectors but is still slowing growth, especially in developed markets.
British Telecom is cutting 10,000 jobs, and cable and telecoms provider Virgin Media is reducing its workforce by about 2,200 by 2012.
