BT is ditching workers faster than your internet connection with 55,000 for chop by 2030
- Reference: 1684409274
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/05/18/bt_redundancies_2030/
- Source link:
The intention is to slash the total labor base, currently some 130,000-strong, to between 75,000 and 90,000, as outlined today when the networks biz released financial results for the full-year ended March 31.
BT remains on track to install fiber-to-the-premises in 25 million properties by the end of next year, and is expecting to have completed the most labor-intensive components in the coming years.
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"By continuing to build and connect like fury, digitise the way we work and simplify our structure, by the end of the 2020s BT Group will rely on a much smaller workforce and a significantly reduced cost base," CEO Philip Jansen said today.
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BT told us that at the lower end of the job cuts estimate, 40,000 positions will be made redundant or some 30 percent of the workforce. This includes 15,000 engineers presently building the fiber network across the UK, and 10,000 that maintain both copper and fiber infrastructure.
"When we stop building the network we won't need that workforce," said Jansen on a call with investors this morning. He added: "New networks are much more efficient. There will be fewer contractors, natural attrition and reskilling."
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A spokesperson told us the company was unable to be more definitive about numbers of redundancies at this point. "This is a long-term structural transformation in our workforce."
Other reductions will include 5,000 positions from various functions across the business, and another 10,000 roles would be cut, most likely in customer services, due to "digitization and automation of processes," the spokesperson added.
"For a company like BT there is a huge opportunity to use AI to be more efficient," said Jansen. "There is a sort of 10,000 reduction from that sort of automated digitization, we will be a huge beneficiary of AI. I believe generative AI is a huge leap forward. Yes, we have to be careful, but it is a massive change."
[5]With pay strikes ending, BT merges divisions to save £100m in annual costs
[6]UK govt wants standalone 5G by 2030 but won't shell out to help hit target
[7]BT CEO orders staff: Back to the office or risk 'disciplinary action'
[8]Telco giant Vodafone to cut 11,000 staff as part of its turnaround plan
IBM recently said it will [9]slow hiring in back-office functions in the next five years because it thinks those roles can be filled by AI.
BT first started a [10]transformation program in 2018 when previous boss Gavin Patterson said the company would chop 13,000 jobs and 90 percent of the real estate over a three-year period. This was intended to save £1.5 billion in operating expenses.
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Tens of thousands of BT staff last year downed tools for a number of days in the first nationwide industrial strike action since 1987. It ran from early summer to [12]December .
The latest BT announcement was "no surprise," said a spokesperson for the Communications Workers Union.
"The introduction of new technologies across the company along with the completion of the fibre infrastructure build replacing the copper network was always going to result in less labour costs for the company in the coming years.
"However, we have made it categorically clear to BT that we want to retain as many direct labour jobs as possible and that any reduction should come from subcontractors in the first instance and natural attrition."
John Ferret, national secretary at Prospect Union, said he was "deeply concerned" by the size of the redundancies. "Announcing such a huge reduction in this way will be very unsettling for workers who did so much to keep the country connected during the pandemic."
Investors don't seem to like the news either – BT's share price was down more than 8.5 percent this morning.
As for the financial results for the 12 months to March 31, BT reported a 1 percent dip in revenue to £20.68 billion ($25.71 billion) and a 50 percent rise in profit after tax to £1.905 billion ($2.368 billion). ®
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/16/with_one_strike_ending_bt/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/12/uk_standalone_5g_2023/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/21/bt_ceo_orders_staff_back/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/16/vodafone_to_shed_11000_fy_2022/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/02/ibm_ai_back_office_jobs/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/10/bt_to_slash_13000_jobs/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/networks&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZGZLqHDC5wHiK@qlECdXWQAAAAE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/07/union_tells_bt_engineers_accept/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "AI to take over in customer services"
I doubt they'll wait for AI to improve - as it's BT, they'll just impose it on their customers anyway no matter how crap and useless it is. After all, it's the "new big thing", and using it despite its' complete unsuitability for interacting with real people about real problems will make them look excitingly modern and cutting edge to the more credulous market analysts who influence their share price.
Re: "AI to take over in customer services"
It should be obvious that the purpose of these automated customer service bots is not to help customers but to frustrate them to the point where they will hang up and never call back.
Re: "AI to take over in customer services"
It should be obvious that the purpose of these automated customer service bots is not to help customers but to frustrate them to the point where they will hang up and never call back.
How does that differ from what BT offer today? How could anyone tell?
Re: "AI to take over in customer services"
"It should be obvious that the purpose of these automated customer service bots is not to help customers but to frustrate them to the point where they will hang up and never call back.
How does that differ from what BT offer today? How could anyone tell?"
That is the whole point, it is no different to today ...... just cheaper as the 'lack of service' is automated and supplied by AI !!!
:)
Re: "AI to take over in customer services"
Can it actually be worse than their existing customer service? The mind boggles.
Re: "AI to take over in customer services"
They never seem to get that the reason I called is that the website didn't allow me to do the more complex thing I'm trying to do.
As an example, I have a locked out account just now with MS and I can't get a number anywhere to talk to a human being, the automatic reset doesn't want to play with this account. Stuck at the moment!
This is the tulip bubble all over again, isn't it?
- ML software is rebranded as AI to magically get funding.
- Corporations selling AI claiming they have the best version.
- Nobody knows what "AI" will do or be a decade from now, but businesses are already planning firing thousands over the next decade on the back of that.
Blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and NFT ran out of steam but AI is the grift that keeps on giving for snakeoil salespeople, when LLMs end up to be a dead end there'll be another AI thing along after that.
Re: This is the tulip bubble all over again, isn't it?
Does anyone know when it's 'flying cars' turn for the venture capital and big tech hype train again?
Re: This is the tulip bubble all over again, isn't it?
Probably just after cold fusion ...
Re: This is the tulip bubble all over again, isn't it?
Is that 'cold fusion on Mars using a smartphone'?
Call centres as the post-industrial future of employment already a dead man walking
Coincidentally, a few days ago I happened to be looking at a call centre building under construction near my work. I remember thinking that the writing was already on the wall for it before it was even finished.
Re: Call centres as the post-industrial future of employment already a dead man walking
I would expect to AI to be better than most off-shored Contact Centres...
Contact Centre industry has been sliding downwards in the UK for years.
The beancounters love off shoring to reduce costs.
Sometimes they move back to UK if the company takes notice of the negative feedback on off-shoring.
There will also be some on-shore due to GDPR on the data or other constraints (e.g. Protectively Marked).
Re: Call centres as the post-industrial future of employment already a dead man walking
Yeah, AI will be so much better, it will be thoroughly trained on worldwide Big Data records from all the offshore contract call centres. Oh, wait....
Re: Call centres as the post-industrial future of employment already a dead man walking
(OP above replying to my own comment)
I forgot to mention the most ironic bit in the context of this story.... which is that it's going to be a *BT* call centre.
They don't mention shrinking their C-levels at all, pity that as it'd be worth a few quid to the positive in the bottom line. And one certainly wonders what AI can do for that crowd, too.
C-Suite AI is easy to program.
10 Does this make me money?
20 If it does, keep doing it.
30 If it doesn't, fire people.
40 go to 10
À C-level AI would probably be indistinguishable from an 8-ball, or a can of beans. Or maybe an empty can of beans, since the make more noise.
A.C-level AI would probably be designed and trained on the textbooks the C-suits don’t read and so do a better job than the C-suits…
Did I get this right?
We'll all have FTTP by the end of the decade?
Re: Did I get this right?
No and by the end of the decade it will be impossible to speak to a human at BT
Re: Did I get this right?
I thought we already reached that state with BT decades ago.
Re: Did I get this right?
BT Openreach engineers are currently still a thing and they are people O_O
Re: Did I get this right?
In BT-speak, "FTTP" means "Not much farther from the fibre termination cabinet than 2 MHz broadband can actually penetrate copper."
Re: Did I get this right?
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
oh, boy you make me laugh.
I live in a postcode with 4 buildings.
We are never going to get FTTP.
By a cunning irony that only modern life could bring...
The Fibre backbone runs directly past the house and there's a junction box (or whatever it's called) less than 20 metres away.
I spoke to the (soon to be made redundant) operative working on it only a week or so ago, and he confirmed that the fibre upgrades going out were for 'yet-to-be-built' estates in the next village/town, but our place (despite being less than 20 metres away, as said), would be highly unlikely to ever get fibre.
Obviously you can't just run a hosepipe from said junction box to the house.... I get that it's more complex than that, but still galling as f***.
Re: Did I get this right?
I thin BT read that as Fibre To The Pavement
Re: Fibre To The Pavement
Fiction To The Premises perhaps?
I would get my coat but I can’t quite Reach.
Re: Did I get this right?
"We'll all have FTTP by the end of the decade?"
No.
What they mean is that they will have finished rolling out FTTP to all the premises they intend to roll it out to. That's not even close to all premises.
I've been told by Openreach that they have finished the rollout in my village, but I can't get FTTP.
OR: But we've got fibre on every pole they said.
Me: But what about all the premises (ie anything built after about 1970) that aren't fed from a pole.
OR: The rollout is just to do poles. We don't do underground fed premises on this rollout.
The more modern housing is fed underground because somebody at the post office (as it was then) decided that underground feeds were more "modern". The underground cables don't even run in ducts, they just go under roads and pavements a few inches below the surface. Cable breaks due to roadworks aren't uncommon. We've had two outages on our street this year. One when they installed some new drains that took out a couple of houses and one that took out the whole street when they were installing some new kerb stones.
Talking to one of the engineers that came to fix the latter he told me why OR weren't rolling out to premises where the d-side is underground. They simply don't have the time or the money to start digging up roads to lay in new d-sides to all the underground fed properties. And from what the engineer told me properties like that aren't included in the rollout project.
I did hear rumours that there were plans to use G.Fast to bring any properties still on copper up to 1Gbps however there are a couple of problems with that.
The first is that G.Fast might be capable of 1Gbps, but only over very short distances, probably below 100m and the loss over greater distances is much worse than with VDSL. The vast majority of cable runs from the DSLAM to the property on FTTC are well over 100m so in a nutshell G.Fast isn't going to be giving very many people anything like a Gig.
The other and more pressing problem is this: The majority of AIO street cabs deployed by OR just happen to be Huawei. GOV.UK have banned the use of Huawei kit in any solution delivering 1Gbps to the end customer. As such OR can't now use G.Fast to deliver "ultrafast" broadband to residential customers without ripping out their street cabs and replacing them with another manufacturer's kit. This might well be more expensive than doing the job right and laying copper into every premises. The best solution I can see is actually doing what they should have done in the first place and putting in poles and feeding aerially all those premises originally fed underground.
Oh and to anybody who says that fibre is irrelevant because 5G will deliver over 1Gbps I can only say have you any idea how far away we are from delivering 5G to every premises in the country? And have you any idea how many properties in the UK can't get a reliable mobile signal of any type at all?
I notice the CEO's job hasn't been threatened with AI, yet.
Pity. Especially when it's probably the easiest job to do with AI, more so than operating a nationwide telecoms network anyway.
Seems a bit premature
I think it's a bit early to be looking at reducing the headcount of people installing fibre - the currently deployed network is nowhere near ready to switch off the copper and their currently announced switch-off dates are wildly optimistic.
Perhaps they should think about laying off all the van drivers, managers, lawyers etc, since AI is so advanced already it could take those jobs as well.
I’ve been a BT customer for over 10 years (no I’m not sure why either). Unbelievably their customer service has improved a bit in that time* and it’s much easier now to speak to someone with a vague clue about what’s going on. Plus they call you back and check on things. With this announcement I’ll assume that is at an end and I’ll just be dealing with a pi55poor chat gpt implementation. Guess my BT tenure is at an end…
*(aside from the time we moved house and they connected us by giving us our new neighbour’s line cutting them off for two weeks).
Replace with AI? Hahahahahahahahahahahaa
I presume they haven't actually *used* any of the stuff around at the moment masquerading as AI.
"AI to take over in customer services"
Well, not-actually-AI will have to improve a bit since thus far it seems to be mainly responsible for an avalanche of even-more-irritating Twitter bots.