FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German telecoms operator Telefonica Deutschland said it would cut 18 percent of full-time jobs to help to achieve cost savings from its takeover of rival E-Plus.
Confirming an earlier report by Reuters Telefonica Deutschland said on Friday it planned to scrap 1,600 jobs out of a total of 9,100 by 2018.
"The planned measures shall contribute to achieving the announced synergies of more than 5 billion euros," Telefonica Deutschland, which is controlled by Spain's Telefonica (MC:TEF) said in a statement.
Telefonica Deutschland bought E-Plus, the German business of Dutch peer KPN (AS:KPN), for 8.6 billion euros (6.85 billion British pounds) to create Germany's largest telecoms operator in terms of customers. Its aim is to get more clout in a battle with Vodafone (L:VOD) and Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile (DE:DTEGn).
Facing demands to invest in faster networks, European telecom groups say they need to get bigger to cope after five years of revenue declines.
They say that the region's fragmented market - which has more than 100 fixed and mobile groups compared with a half dozen in the United States - leads to price wars and poorer-quality service for consumers.
The merger between Germany's third and fourth telecoms operators was cleared by the European Commission in July after Telefonica Deutschland had promised to make parts of its network available to mobile virtual operators.
But consumer organisations have been sceptical about how the German market, where mobile prices are amongst the highest in Europe, will be affected by the reduction from four to three carriers.
A similar deal in smaller market Austria last year did lead to price rises despite the buyer Hutchison (HK:0013) agreeing to host virtual operators on its network.
(Reporting by Peter Maushagen and Harro ten Wolde. Editing by Jane Merriman)