Level 3 to Cut 325 Jobs
Company says move part of a staff 'realignment'

April 3, 2001 -- Level 3 Communications, Inc. today said it will eliminate 325 jobs as it realigns its workforce to focus on sales and network operations.
The cuts represent 6 percent of Level 3's staff. In a statement, company officials cited the completion of its worldwide network and the need to remain financially strong as factors in the layoffs.
"Today's announcement is consistent with our continuing efforts to ensure we are well positioned both financially and operationally to capitalize on market opportunities as they develop,'' said Level 3 CEO James Q. Crowe.
"With the completion of the Level 3 Network, our company is increasingly focused on leveraging the substantial competitive advantages of infrastructure we have built over the last 36 months,'' said Crowe. "While we anticipate that our total employment will grow during the year, we expect our hiring to be primarily in the key areas of sales, provisioning and network operations."
The announcement came on a day when Level 3's shares were down sharply as part of a broad selloff on the NASDAQ market, with tech stocks particularly hard-hit. At mid-afternoon, Level 3 was down $3 at $12.08, a drop of 20 percent on the session.
Just last week, the company announced the opening of Internet gateway centers in Pittsburgh, Pa. and Princeton, N.J.
Denver-based Level 3 offers bandwidth services in more than 150 Internet and communications centers in North America, Europe and Asia, including 50 advanced Level 3 data centers and 100 data centers being leased from other providers. Level 3 said its customer base has exceeded 2,400 communications intensive customers, including Akamai, Microsoft, EarthLink and Yahoo Broadcast.