Charter Communications has implemented sweeping layoffs that will impact around 1,000 employees at key call centers across the country, according to a report.
On Friday, Fierce Networks said Charter recently disclosed plans to eliminate more than 450 jobs from its call center in Southern California, 330 jobs in Minnesota, 230 jobs in Texas and 175 jobs in Ohio.
The information was based on local newspaper and television reports, and later confirmed by a Charter spokesperson, who said some of the employees may transfer to other customer service centers where there are open positions. Those who choose to take advantage of the opportunity will receive unspecified relocation benefits; affected employees who do not move to another customer service center will receive a severance package.
Charter offers cable TV, broadband Internet and wireless phone service under the Spectrum brand. It counts more than 32 million customers across its service footprint in 41 states.
Over the past 12 months, Charter has faced increasing competition from fixed wireless Internet providers and some smaller regional players that are chipping away at Charter’s customer base with their own high-speed Internet offerings. The company lost 72,000 Spectrum Internet customers during the first three months of 2024.
Broadband is becoming a bigger focus for Charter and other telecoms as customers pull the plug on cable television. Despite successful negotiations with programmers to incorporate more value in Spectrum TV packages by including access to some ad-supported streaming services, the company is still shedding customers, with its most-recent earnings report showing a loss of 237,000 pay TV subscribers.
Charter is seeing more success in its wireless product, called Spectrum Mobile, which offers low-cost service when bundled with Spectrum Internet. Charter purchases wholesale access to Verizon’s 4G LTE and 5G networks for Spectrum Mobile, which allows the company to offer discounted wireless phone plans without having to maintain the network infrastructure associated with the service. Spectrum Mobile added 486,000 lines during Q1 2024, the company said.
Charter is far from the only cable operator to trim its employee headcount over the past few months. Late last year, Comcast eliminated an unspecified number of technical positions associated with its customer experience products. Earlier this month, regional operator Cable One said it was laying off 4 percent of its employees.
