Panic grips telecom staff over jobs, hikes

Hyper-competition in the telecom sector has triggered concerns among the employees of small telecom companies about potential mass lay-offs. The mood among staff in the big companies is also not great as they foresee smaller salary hikes.

“Since the start of the new telecom war, the mood in the industry is sombre and many are worried that companies may start laying off people. The recent situation in the industry shows that only big players will survive,” said an employee of a small telecom firm.

Even in the telecom companies which are consolidating, employees are concerned that many may lose jobs.

“Many of us are in a wait-and-watch mode. We don’t know what will happen after the consolidation. Some jobs which are over-lapping may be cut. There is a lot of confusion and uncertainty right now,” said an employee of another telecom firm which is in the process of merging itself with another telecom company.

Last month, Reliance Jio started its mobile services offering free voice calls to its customers. Jio has also said that it will not charge for voice and data till December 31. This has forced other companies to cut their broadband rates. Reliance Jio claimed on Sunday that it added 16 million subscribers in its first month of operations — September. This is likely to force other operators to further cut their tariff to keep their customers.

Even employees of big telecom operators fear that salary hikes may shrink as the margins of service providers are declining and there is a huge pressure to increase investments to upgrade and expand networks to stay ahead of competition. “Things will be only clear after January when Reliance Jio commercially starts its services. Then we will be clear what will be the impact but certainly margins and profitably will get impacted and that will have influence on salary hikes,” said an industry official.

Interestingly, even employees of foreign MNCs, which manage networks of the telecom companies, are worried that salaries will get impacted. “Globally our company is reducing jobs. Already we were getting hike of just five per cent. This type of competition is likely to shrink our margins too as telecom companies may go for hard bargaining,” said an employee with a telecom network manufacturing and software management firm.