AOL, a subsidiary of Time Warner, notified
workers in Albuquerque, N.M., and Tucson, Ariz., that the
facilities will close in mid-December, said AOL spokesman
Nicholas Graham.
AOL is also selling its call center in Ogden, Utah, where
400 people work, he said. The company plans to "transition
their positions and the facility to a new company in the
coming months," according to an AOL statement.
In August, the company said it would offer services it
previously charged for--like member e-mail--for free, in a
move to stem a tide of member cancellations lured by free
Web services elsewhere.
At the same time, AOL said that it was in talks to sell off
its Internet access units in several European countries as
part of its move to get out of the access market.
"Recently, AOL announced the sales of the access businesses
in the UK, France and Germany. As a part of that process,
the acquiring companies will be providing continued
employment for nearly all of the affected AOL Europe access
employees, so these are not layoffs," Graham said in a
statement.
In the company's latest transformation, AOL is moving to the
free model for services that Yahoo and Google have
popularized, and is broadening its digital entertainment
offerings to capitalize on the proliferation of broadband
connections across the Web.
In August the company said it would likely reduce its
workforce by about 5,000. The personnel transitions, layoffs
and other changes so far total about 4,000.
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