Orange to lay off 485 employees in Spain amid ‘hypercompetitive’ market

MADRID: Orange’s Spanish business will lay off up to 485 employees in the coming weeks, the company said on Friday, citing years of shrinking income amid Spain’s hypercompetitive and increasingly low-cost telecommunications sector.

France’s biggest telecoms firm had already signalled that ruthless competition in Spain – its second-largest market – was a long-term trend in the region after posting worse-than-expected results in the first quarter.

Like its European rivals, Orange has been facing growth issues separate from the pandemic’s impact as the sector, which has spent extensively on infrastructure such as fibre-optic cabling, scrambles to fund its upgrade to next-generation 5G networks.