That means 8,000 job cuts over a three year period, as part of a major restructuring exercise. The IT services part of DT is underperforming and, according to Bloomberg, the DT bosses are looking at cutting back on direct DT involvement in classic communications outsourcing, where the telco takes over management of communications and computer systems. Instead, DT appears to be looking to outsource the outsourcing to partners.(someone will have to do the actual at some stage surely… Ed).

Spookily the leak comes just a weekend after we published a ‘predictions for 2014’ by consultancy, Northstream, which predicted just such a series of moves by Europe’s big telcos as they struggled to cut costs. (see - Operators should give up on chasing size and scale).