NTL to cut thousands of jobs?

The BBC report that NTL may be about to cut between 4000 - 6000 jobs and outsource its call centre operations.

This is not wholly unexpected, due to the merger with Telewest, however will still be a blow ot many that work there. I personnaly worked there for 2 years, and went through many re-structures, and they are never nice. I wish all the NTL employees the best through these difficult times.

Outsourcing the call centre still feels wrong though. I know there are financial benefits (and let's face it, they have just spent nearly £1 billion on Virgin Mobile!), but this means training a whole new group of people to support their customers.

Many will say that NTL customer support couldn't be worse anyway they operate it, but NTL's systems are very complex (and the cause of many of their problems) and they have hundreds of call centre operators trained in their eccentricities. Outsourcing the call centre will mean another 6-12 months of disruption for NTL (and Telewest now?) customers and more bad feeling. They really need to concentrate on bedding these new (Telewest and Virgin Mobile) services down, before making more significant changes....