(Correct the typographic error in the title)
(Reuters) -BT Group, CEO, Allison Kirkby, said that progress in artificial intelligence could deepen major job cuts in progress at the British Telecoms Company, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.
Kirkby told the newspaper that BT’s plans to reduce more than 40,000 jobs and withdraw 3 billion pounds ($ 4 billion) by the end of the decade “did not reflect the full potential of the AI”.
“Depending on what we learn from AI … There may be an opportunity for BT to be even smaller by the end of the decade,” said the FT.
The largest British broadband and mobile supplier said in 2023 that he would reduce up to 55,000 jobs, including entrepreneurs, by 2030. His CEO at the time, Philip Jansen said that the company would rely on a much smaller workforce and at the basis of considerably reduced costs by the end of the 2020s.
Kirkby, who succeeded Jansen a year ago, also opened the door to a possible future open-off spin-off, the company’s network infrastructure activity, said the FT.
She said that she did not think that the value of Openreach was reflected in the course of the company’s action and that if that persisted, BT “should absolutely look at the options”.
In an email response to Reuters, BT said that Optreach was not something that the company is actively considering at the moment. He did not make any other comments on the Kirkby FT interview.
BT said last month that a high demand for a large strip of fibers and more than 900 million pounds of savings had contributed to strengthening its income in the year and increasing cash flows.
Resilience in Openreach is available from income and profits in its commercial and consumer units, where the inherited vocal services continued to decline and the sales of combinations have dropped.
(1 $ = 0.7372 pounds)
(Report by Rishabh Jaiswal in Bengalredity by Raju Gopalakrishnan, William Mallard and David Goodman)
