In a statement, the company said it was “realigning” in an effort to “become a more trusted partner for customers” and to return to growth with more appealing offers.

“At the same time, Vodafone is preparing to face the increased cost pressure worldwide, especially in the energy and components sector,” it added.

According to Telecoms.com, Vodafone said the savings would enable it to plough more money into technology, its network expansion and major customer projects in the future.

All this would come as little comfort for the soon-to-be ex-employees. Vodafone said the cuts would be made in management, double functions (the statement was in German, so hopefully ‘double functions’ roughly translates to ‘overlap’ rather than some poor soul who is already doing two jobs), and in areas without direct customer contact.

At the same time, Vodafone Germany plans to fill 400 new customer-facing roles, which means the net loss of headcount is actually 900. Again, crumbs of comfort are few and far between for anyone who doesn’t score a transfer to one of these new positions.

The redundancies are not wholly unexpected. Germany stood out as being a particularly big cause for concern in Vodafone’s most recent financial report. The telco’s biggest single market saw fiscal third quarter service revenue fall 1.8 percent year-on-year due to customer losses.