Helio Sales and Distribution Realignment with cutting jobs

Updated: the company is cutting 100 jobs, according to a commenter below, and confirmed by Helio spokesperson. Most of these, as we mentioned below, are in field sales.

Original post: The Earthlink (Nsdq: ELNK) and SK Telecom-owned MVNO Helio is taking a closer look at its business, after a series of meetings at the company: the company is making changes in it sales and distribution strategy, and will now focus on major/urban markets instead of nationwide, according to Helio spokesperson I spoke to earlier. No word on any layoffs, but the company now has close to 600 employees (from an earlier of about 700, before this job cut). Compared to a typical MVNO, Helio outsources very little of its work, and owns customer service and billing operations as well, hence the large number of employees. These changes will not affect its five standalone stores in San Diego, LA, Denver, Palo Alto and NYC, even though from anecdotal evidence, all of them are pretty low on any customers. The company will now focus on expanding its direct mall kiosks, which it said have been successful in getting subscribers.

Om also reports on this, and has this tidbit: The product and services team is being paired down because the services road map has been drastically reduced to focus more on the core phone features and a few premium ones.

This comes as parent Earthlink announced 900 job cuts earlier this week, though the new CEO Rolla Huff has expressed his support to the venture. Helio had losses of $83.8 million in Q2. According to Korean newspaper Chosun, SKT has also expressed continued support and optimism: An SK Telecom official said, “Helio has potential if it achieves the goal of luring 250,000 subscribers by the end of the year. Of course, we’re discussing insurance against unforeseen incidents, too.”