Less customers means less jobs and, in this case, T-Mobile is citing loss of customers as the primary reason for closing seven of its 24 call centers and laying off 1,900 of its 36,000 employees in the process. Another 1,400 employees are being offered transfers as it increases staff at remaining call centers. Additionally, T-Mobile is scrambling to find money anywhere it can to invest in its network—presumably its 4G network.

While the call centers certainly hurt, the pain is not set to end there. Thanks to the failed merger, lost customers, and T-Mobile’s need for investment funds, there will be more restructurings and layoffs before the end of Q2, most of them by the end of May. These cuts will not further affect the call centers, front-line retail employees, or network technicians, but jobs will be trimmed elsewhere.

Meanwhile, AT&T’s Senior Executive Vice President of External and Legislative Affairs Jim Cicconi made a rather interesting public statement this afternoon. It pretty much boils down to the most well-worded and amenable “I told you so” that has ever been made. An excerpt is below—hit the source for the full statement.

Normally, we’d not comment on something like this [announcement]. But I feel this is an exception for one big reason– only a few months ago AT&T promised to preserve these very same call centers and jobs if our merger was approved. We also predicted that if the merger failed, T-Mobile would be forced into major layoffs.

…as I learned in my years of public service, the price of a bad decision is too often paid by someone else.

[Reuters | AT&T via AllThingsD]