Virgin Media O2 is preparing to cut thousands of jobs as part of plans to reduce its total workforce costs by around 30% over the next two years.

The UK broadband and mobile provider, jointly owned by Liberty Global and Telefónica, has announced a major restructuring programme aimed at delivering annual cost savings of approximately £800 million by 2029.

Around £300 million of these savings are expected to come from workforce reductions, with the majority of cuts affecting non-customer-facing roles.

While the company has not confirmed the exact number of redundancies, the changes are expected to impact thousands of employees, with senior leadership positions already being reduced.

The restructuring comes amid mounting pressure from BT’s extensive UK fibre network expansion and growing competition from smaller alternative network providers, commonly known as ‘alt-nets’.

As part of its revised strategy, Virgin Media O2 is also halting further investment in upgrading its existing cable network to full fibre, beyond commitments already made to partners.

“Given ‌the ⁠market conditions we face, the regulatory backdrop in fibre and the technological changes sweeping across all areas of the economy, standing still ​and doing ​what we’ve ⁠always done is not an option,” chief executive Lutz Schüler said.

The media group has had a challenging year, with its third quarter results reflecting a 23,300 fixed-line customer loss, with revenue down 5.7%.