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CenturyLink to cut 150 workers in Colorado, sets focus on managing expenses

CenturyLink announced that it has let go nearly 150 employees in Colorado, or 2.5 percent of its workforce, from the company.

These latest job cuts, which are part of a broader effort to lay off a total of 1,000 employees, are being implemented to tighten its purse strings.

"We are investing for the future, and periodic adjustments in our expense management will also continue to be necessary," said Mark Molzen, a company spokesman, in a Denver Post article.

It should be of no great surprise that the telco is making this move. Glen Post, CEO of CenturyLink, said the company would be making some adjustments as its second quarter 2015 financial results fell short of its forecast, due "primarily due to continued pressure on wholesale revenues and higher employee and benefit costs."

At that time, Post said that CenturyLink was "implementing plans to reduce planned operating expenses by approximately $125 million in the second half of 2015, including lowering contract labor and professional services cost, a reduction in the number of employees and other expense reductions."

Like other incumbent telcos, CenturyLink is going through growing pains in its wholesale and business segments as more of its customer base transitions off of lower speed copper-based TDM services to IP-based services like Ethernet, something that was a factor during the second quarter.

Second quarter business revenues were $2.66 billion, down 4.6 percent from second quarter 2014, due to lower legacy, low-bandwidth data services and data integration revenues. The losses were partially offset by growth in high-bandwidth revenues. At the same time, business segment margin declined to 42.6 percent from 45.6 percent a year.

It appears that the company is looking to find ways to enhance its business services workforce. According to the company's website over 40 job openings have been posted in Colorado with a particular focus on sales, security and software development.

Molzen reiterated that the latest job cuts would not affect their plans to expand their 1 Gbps FTTH and Prism IPTV footprints in the Denver area. Overall, the telco said it plans to bring FTTH services to 700,000 households and 25,000 businesses by the end of the year.