Rogers Communications, Canada’s largest cable and mobile operator, is reportedly preparing to offer voluntary buyouts for about 10,000 eligible employees, or roughly half of its workforce.
That move, first reported by The Global and Mail (subscription required), ties into a broader cost-cutting effort, which includes a decision to slash capital spending this year by about 30%.
Rogers will make buyout offers to eligible employees across its business units and in corporate function areas. However, on-air talent, Sportsnet employees and Toronto Blue Jays employees and unionized workers will not be eligible, reported CBC News.
“We are taking steps to adjust our cost structure to reflect the business realities of the current environment,” Rogers said in a statement shared with multiple news outlets. “As part of this, some teams have chosen to offer voluntary departure and retirement programs to give some employees the choice to decide whether they’d like to stay with the company or begin a new chapter.”
Rogers, which disclosed having about 25,000 employees in its 2025 annual report, merged with Shaw Communications in March 2023. The company did not immediately respond to questions about how many employees it expects to take the voluntary buyout offer and whether it would follow with compulsory layoffs if the number of employees taking the voluntary buyout did not meet expectations.
Bloomberg believes the number of departures will be well below 10,000, citing past examples that about 10% of eligible employees tend to apply for such voluntary exit packages. If so, math suggests that about 1,000 Rogers employees will take the offer.
Rogers cable unit dependent on Comcast tech and services
It’s also not clear how many Rogers cable employees are being offered the voluntary package. Notably, Rogers relies heavily on Comcast for software, next-gen network designs, certain Comcast-designed hardware, including cable modems and gateways, and various services that extend across areas such as video, broadband, home security and cloud-powered gaming.
In 2024, Rogers started to adopt Comcast’s Xfinity branding. Also in 2024, Rogers cut a ten-year tech and product agreement with Comcast.
Spending cuts
On last week’s Q1 earnings call, Rogers President and CEO Tony Staffieri stressed that the company must “prudently manage leverage” as it completes a major, multi-year investment cycle and wades through a period of sluggish growth. He also claimed that government policies are not rewarding investment, so “we need to adjust our spending and be highly disciplined and deliberate stewards of our capital.”
As such, he said Rogers is slashing capital spending by 30% in 2026 versus last year, to a range of $2.5 billion to $2.7 billion, which translates to a capital intensity ratio of about 12%, down from 17% in 2025.
Rogers didn’t say whether wireless or cable would take the brunt of those cuts, but CFO Glenn Brandt said the reduction would be spread across Rogers’ networks along with general capital expenditures.
Q1 snapshot
For Q1, Rogers posted total service revenue of $4.9 billion, up 10%, with wireless up 2% to $2.59 billion and cable up 1% to $1.94 billion.
Rogers added 28,000 net postpaid wireless customers for a total of 11.02 million, and 5,000 net prepaid customers for a total of 1.20 million.
“This year, we saw aggressive wireless promotional activity from competitors driven by supply rather than demand,” Staffieri said. “Heading into the quarter, we expected the market would be flat year-over-year with no population growth and potentially no new net adds. We did not lead on pricing aggression. … [O]ur priority is and remains on financials. This is even more important in a low-growth environment.”
In cable, Rogers added 7,000 broadband subs, extending its total to 4.5 million, and it shed 32,000 video subs, lowering that total to 2.47 million.
Rogers’ cable unit ended the quarter with 10.57 million homes passed.