Telephone service provider BTC yesterday announced it would be cutting an undisclosed number of jobs as part of a company reorganisation to boost efficiency levels.

"In order to achieve an even higher level of operational productivity we will have to 'resize' the company", BTC CEO Francis Mussenden said yesterday at a Press conference.

The news came two days after parent company KeyTech released its earnings report showing that Fabian had cost it $2.3 million, and that net income at $10.43 million had seen little growth over the $10.16 million posted a year prior.

"BTC has faced a number of challenges over the last few years, not the least of which is the opening of the telecommunications sector to competition and the arrival of Hurricane Fabian to the Island," he said, but cited these challenges as giving BTC the opportunity to "make substantial improvements".

BTC also yesterday announced plans for a "next generation Contact Centre" to handle all calls, promising customers that there calls would be dealt with at the time of the call and not "handed off" to other departments.

Speaking of job losses, Mr. Mussenden said there was "no fixed number for reductions at this point" but did allow that they would be asking ten of the staff in BTC's Business Customer Premises Equipment (CPE) division to agree to "voluntary separation".

The "voluntary separation" option is only to be offered to staff that have been with the company for more than five years and have not yet reached the age of 55.

That group, which is made up of about 50 staff, have a period of between one and two weeks to decide on whether they want to take the separation package. If the company does not get ten voluntary leavers, it said it would take the next step of making redundancies.

BTC confirmed that the voluntary package was more "generous" than the terms of the Collective Agreement made with the labour unions should there be redundancies made.

Staff and the unions were said to have been notified of the company's plans before they were made public at the Press conference yesterday.

Other job losses will follow but Mr. Mussenden would not commit to how many may be affected, saying BTC was going through a systematic process, division by division.

Bermuda Industrial Union president Derrick Burgess confirmed that BTC had been working with union representatives.

But he added: "As always we do not like redundancies ? we prefer jobs."

He said BTC had signed to abide by the Collective Agreement, if it moved to axe employee jobs.

Meanwhile, Mr. Mussenden conceded the company had no choice but to make these changes given flat growth in revenue in recent years and because of the pressures of a competitive marketplace, after the company lost the monopoly it had had on the Bermuda market for many years.

At least one other provider is currently able to offer telephone services locally with North Rock Communications breaking into the market with its roll out of fixed wireless service last September.

And Quantum Communications announced yesterday that it was moving back into the market with data services for the commercial sector, and that voice services were to be offered shortly.

BTC has most likely seen demand for its services fall with the increase in mobile phone users, although a sister company, Mobility, is in this market. Mr. Mussenden said: "BTC feels it needs to introduce these changes to the current model in order for it to be more efficient and effective.

"This is the mandate that we received both from our customers and from the regulatory body that oversees our activities, and we are going to make it work," he said.

Mr. Mussenden said pressure had come from the Telecommunications Commission, as regulator for this industry, to pull up its socks.

A Telecommunications spokesman yesterday said the role of the Commission was never to "manage any licensed carriers" but it was charged with vetting any rate increases or decreases by carriers, to investigate any issue between licensed carriers and to hold public hearings for new licence applications, or to hold an inquiry into any matter ordered by the Minister.

But he ruled out the Commission "getting into how an organisation should restructure or anything like that".