A major reorganisation is on the way for Deutsche Bundespost Telekom in face of growing competition, the telephone company announced in Bonn on Friday. According to Reuter, Telekom’s supervisory board on Thursday approved the reform, which aims to reshape the telecommunications monopoly into a customer-oriented company and break down its lumbering bureaucracy. The company optimistically hopes to raise turnover by 60% to $56,000m by the year 2000 and greatly enhance efficiency, and is looking to rapid growth to avoid the large redundancies declared by its US, UK and Japanese counterparts as they shake off the bloated trappings of monopoly. About 30% of Telekom’s 250,000 employees will be transferred to new divisions, but only about 2% will even have to transfer to new places of work. Some European telecommunications firms, but mainly the US carriers, are following an offensive expansion strategy. Their preferred target is the growing German market – the largest in Europe, the company said. Telekom hopes it can benefit from the experiences of other former monopolies. Examples from other countries show that a collapse of the market follows liberalisation. We want to take the necessary decisions today to avoid tomorrow’s competitors forcing us to reduce our personnel with social brutality, as for example has occurred at NTT Corp in Japan, the company said. Telekom’s new structure, which will take effect on January 1, involves setting up three customer divisions – private customers, business customers and systems major – customers, each with its own organisation. Two technical divisions, networks and services, will be formed to sell technical services to the other divisions. Cellular phone service will also become an independent division.
