Global telco Viatel has been forced to shed up to 700 jobs across Europe and the US to survive in the increasingly cut-throat European telecoms market.

The redundancies are likely to affect former Destia and AT&T UK staff, who became Viatel employees after it bought out both companies.

"These cuts are all the way across the board. In the UK alone we have a headquarters in Victoria, a network operating centre in Surrey and our former AT&T base in Redditch which will be affected," said Glenn Davidson, senior vice president at Viatel.

Some analysts are sceptical of the strategy, however. "If Viatel is on such a high growth rate, why is it getting rid of salespeople, who are in very short supply, rather than putting them in different parts of the company?" asked Rod Chisholm, an analyst at HSBC Investment Bank.

First published in Computing