SFR's parent company Altice France has presented a strategic plan covering the next five years while starting negotiations with trade unions on a new wave of job cuts. The company intends to reduce its workforce with a voluntary redundancy programme targeting 11 percent of SFR's workforce during the current year. This represents 1,700 employees, 400 of them from the operator’s retail stores. Meanwhile, the number of SFR shops is set to fall from 630 to 568 by 2022, in line with a reorganisation of retail activities unveiled in 2019.
Alongside this voluntary redundancy programme, the company announced plans to recruit 1,000 young graduates over four years and renew its apprenticeship scheme by attracting 1,000 trainees annually.
News of the restructuring coincided with the publication of mid-term objectives focused on SFR's ongoing network deployments. The operator will continue to invest heavily on its infrastructure to meet growing traffic demand (+35% in 2020). By 2025, the fibre footprint will extend to cover over 90 percent of French households, supporting a target of 5 million FTTH net additions. Over the same period, 90 percent of B2B clients will have moved to fibre-based connections.
In the consumer segment, SFR's fibre-based lines reached 3.34 million at end-December (FTTH, hybrid fibre-coaxial, and LTE fixed wireless), with a marketable footprint of 20.63 million homes across FTTH and hybrid fibre-coaxial connectivity.
In the mobile market, the operator aims to become the leading network in terms of 5G customers relying on 3.5 GHz spectrum. Currently, 25 percent of new mobile sign-ups subscribe to a 5G plan. By 2025, coverage will extend to 98 percent of cities with more than 10,000 people, using 3.5 GHz frequencies.
