T-Mobile USA closing call centers, cutting staff

The unit of Deutsche Telekom is cutting costs to preserve cash for investment in its network as part of a bigger restructuring following the failure of its proposed $39 billion purchase by AT&T Inc late last year.

The No. 4 U.S. mobile service, which has been losing customers to bigger and smaller rivals, said on Thursday that it will now make do with 17 call centers instead of 24 since it now handles a smaller volume of customer calls because it has fewer customers.

The seven centers employed about 3,300 people. The company said it was offering transfers to employees of the shuttered call centers, as it plans to add 1,400 jobs at the remaining 17 centers.

It also plans to restructure other parts of the business by the end of the second quarter but it declined to give specifics beyond saying that the changes would not affect service representatives in the 17 remaining call centers, engineering technicians or front-line employees in its stores.

T-Mobile USA currently has 36,000 employees.

(This story was corrected by the company to fix the number of employees in final paragraph to 36,000 employees, not 37,000)

(Reporting By Sinead Carew; Editing by Gary Hill)