Broadband company cuts 200 jobs

Managers from around the country broke the news to staff

More than 200 jobs are to be lost from a broadband company in Plymouth.

Telewest Broadband is to close its call centre in Plymouth by March 2005 and 204 staff are facing redundancy.

The company said that it was planning to change the way it routed calls and had experienced a "significant reduction in call volumes".

The company said it was consulting all affected staff and that it would continue to have an employee base in the city.

'Risk of redundancy'

Senior managers from all over the country came in to break the news to staff on Thursday. However, some employers said they found out about the job losses after seeing local newspapers earlier in the day.

One man told the BBC Spotlight programme: "To find out you're going to lose a job from a paper before you're told by the company is not a good feeling at all."

Telewest Broadband said it was planning "to introduce new technology and change the way we route calls across several of our national in-house and out-sourced customer care centres".

It admitted the 204 jobs were "at risk of redundancy".

Telewest describes itself as a "broadband communications and media group".

It provides digital television, telephone and internet services to 1.77m residential customers in the UK.