Ericsson to offshore hundreds of contract positions

A quarter of support roles to go overseas

Ericsson is cutting back on its contract roster to the tune of "several hundred" UK staff, with the roles going out to India and Romania in the interests of lower costs.

Ericsson, one of the biggest suppliers of networking infrastructure to the cellular industry, said that support functions and office roles would be switched to "remote delivery" to save money, and pointed out that the network operators have been doing much the same thing.

The exact roles, and numbers, are still being worked out, but the company rep told us that it will be a couple of hundred jobs making up about 25 per cent of the staff involved in network management. The plan is to have the shift completed in the next six months or so.

Those affected are contracted staff, so there won't be any redundancies as such, just fewer people with jobs. ®