Verizon, Crown Castle, Cisco confirm layoffs

Verizon, Crown Castle and Cisco are among the companies in the US telecom industry in the midst of cutting jobs.

The news isn't surprising: The sector is experiencing a spending slowdown, exacerbated by rising interest rates and increasing competition. Further, similar situations are playing out in other parts of the wider technology market.

Regardless, the situation appears to be affecting thousands of jobs.

"Crown Castle ... initiated a restructuring plan as part of the company's efforts to reduce costs to better align the company's operational needs with lower tower activity," the company wrote in an SEC filing Monday. "The plan includes reducing the Company's total employee headcount by approximately 15%."

As of January 31, Crown Castle employed approximately 5,000 people.

The move doesn't come as a total surprise. Last week, Crown Castle – one of the nation's biggest cell tower companies – said it would cut $90 million in expected services revenues from its full-year 2023 financial forecast.

In its new filing, Crown Castle said it would discontinue offering network installation services within its cell tower business as part of the move, but that it would continue to offer cell site development services. The company also said it would incur restructuring charges of $120 million related to the layoffs.

Cuts across the industry

Crown Castle isn't alone.

"During the quarter, we took actions to rationalize our workforce as we continue to see benefits from rationalizing certain legacy wireline products," Verizon CFO Tony Skiadas said Tuesday during the company's quarterly conference call.

Skiadas said the cuts would come from Verizon's Global Services program. Verizon recently named Craig Silliman as president of Verizon Global Services (VGS).

Skiadas suggested the cuts were part of the cost-savings program Verizon launched last year. That program is designed to cut $2-3 billion from Verizon's bottom line by 2025. And that program builds on the four-year, $10 billion cost-cutting program Verizon finished in 2021.

Verizon officials didn't answer questions from Light Reading about the details of the new job cuts.

To be clear, Verizon isn't the only operator looking to cut costs. AT&T hopes to trim $6 billion from its budget by the end of this year via a program it started in 2020.

AT&T counted 172,900 employees in 2021 and that declined to 162,900 at the end of 2022 (figures that don't include WarnerMedia or DirecTV). During that same period, Verizon's overall employee headcount fell from 118,400 in 2021 to 117,100 in 2022.

Cisco, Dish Network and Ericsson are among the other companies in the telecom industry cutting jobs.

Cisco, for its part, said the company's recent layoffs stem from an announcement it made late last year.

"These recent notifications are part of the rebalancing effort we began in November 2022, which included a limited restructuring impacting our real estate portfolio and approximately 5 percent of our workforce," a Cisco spokesperson wrote in response to questions from Light Reading. "As we announced then, this is not about cost savings as we have roughly the same number of employees as we did before the process began. This rebalancing is about prioritizing investments in our transformation, to meet and exceed our customers' expectations in the changing technology landscape. We will continue to do everything we can to help place affected employees in open roles and offer extensive support including generous severance packages."

Meanwhile, Dish and Ericsson have also engaged recently in varying degrees of job cuts.

Related posts:

— Mike Dano, Editorial Director, 5G & Mobile Strategies, Light Reading | @mikeddano