USA Today: America Online is laying off more than 700 employees, mainly in call centers, as its base of dial-up subscribers continues to slump.
AOL is closing its Orlando call center and laying off the 450 employees that work there, spokesman Nicholas Graham said Wednesday. It is also cutting positions in centers in Jacksonville, Fla., Tucson, and at its headquarters in Dulles, in northern Virginia.
Graham attributed the cuts to a decline in members and an increased base of “computer-savvy” users that do a lot of their own troubleshooting.
A number of companies have expressed interest in AOL’s growing, advertising-supported online content business, including Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Comcast Corp., and Yahoo Inc. But the companies are not interested in AOL’s Internet service business, which is large and highly profitable but also in decline as consumers shift to faster broadband access services.
