Cable Forum received several emails over the weekend informing us that there were going to be announcements today regarding redundancies within COBI, which is the operations side of ntl:home.

Due to the sensitive nature of this information, we decided not to post this information until we had confirmation. Regrettably, the rumours now appear to have been confirmed. Today we received the following information:

• In the North West, 10% of the Engineers are on 90 day redundancy notice.
• In addition, ntl’s install teams are apparently moving back into the COBI arena as of the 1st February.

Overall, it would appear that ntl is shedding 10-15% of its workforce nationally.

A high-up source at ntl suggested that following this latest round of lay-offs, merger talks with Telewest could already be underway, with the companies planning to market a unified set of TV, telephone and internet products to all customers before the end of this year.

The Cable Forum team wish to offer our support to those affected and we hope that they find more rewarding work elsewhere as soon as possible.