Optus Retrenches Further 150 Staff
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday March 14, 1998
Optus Communications has slashed another 150 staff, this time from its residential business division, to cut costs and post a profit in the near future.
Optus has retrenched its door-to-door sales team, opting to market its residential products over the phone, commonly known as telemarketing.
The decision to do away with door-to-door sales is a sign that Optus is not intending to pick up new pay TV subscribers in the immediate future.
Since October last year, Optus has deliberately wound back its pay TV marketing budget, resulting in a small net loss of subscribers. Optus has 170,000 pay TV subscribers, while arch-rival Foxtel is on the verge of notching up its 300,000th subscriber.
Importantly, the decision to cut costs in the residential business division comes at a time when Optus is attempting to break into the $4.5 billion local call telephone market.
Optus is attempting to strike a commercial resale agreement with Telstra, allowing it to sell local calls at 20c to customers around Australia.
The push to get a resale agreement from Telstra is the direct result of Optus's failure to make its cable telephone network work on a large scale.
An Optus spokesman said the latest job redundancies were spread across the company's Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane sales operations.
Yesterday's sackings are part of a massive cost-cutting program by Optus. Already, the company has cut 1,500 jobs, or about 20 per cent of its workforce, since Optus Communications was merged with its pay TV arm Optus Vision in early 1997.
Optus's 49 per cent-owner, Cable & Wireless, is determined to extract a profit from Optus, after the telecommunications group booked a loss of $84 million for the six months to the end of December.
© 1998 Sydney Morning Herald