Rostelecom, Russia’s leading telecommunications operator, is planning to lay off between ten and twelve thousand employees each year for the next three years as it installs a new generation of programmable switches (Soft Switches), and builds a network of fiber-optic communication lines. One in five employee looks at risk of losing their jobs, but those who survive the cull will see their salaries increase, its President Sergei Kalugin said this week. His objective is to turn Rostelecom into a global player when measured by both scale and activity, and to increase revenue per employee from the current RUB1.8n to RUB2.5m by 2018. Lenta