With voice revenues hitting an all time low and data services yet to reach the level where it can compensate for the loss in voice revenues, mobile operators especially in developed markets are facing a tough time to sustain growth in profits and cost savings seem to be the immediate goal.

In lines with this focus, USA-based mobile service provider, Verizon Communications announced a mammoth 13,000 job cuts. This is in addition to the 17,000 job cuts executed last year.

The dramatic announcement follows the company posting a net loss of $ 653 million when compared to a profit of $1.24 billion recorded a year ago. The loss was mainly on account of restructuring charge incurred by the company over last year’s job slashing.

Revenues rose from $ 24.6 billion to $ 27.1 billion on a yoy comparison. Fixedline revenues dropped 3.9% to $11.5 billion.

Till now the company has been slashing jobs every year since 2008. In 2008 it cut 13,000 jobs from its fixedline division followed by another 13,000 in 2009. The company’s total headcount stands at 223,000 with 117,000 under the fixedline services.

The company managed to add 2.2 million wireless subscribers in Q4 as compared to 1.2 million added last year during the corresponding quarter.

The company was able to notch up increased revenues from VAS including data revenues and text messaging with revenues from such stream up 31% to $ 16 billion.