VIENNA, June 15 (Reuters) - Austria may spin off Telekom Austria's fixed-line network infrastructure to take the company's legacy civil servants off its payroll, a leading policymaker said over the weekend.
Under the plan, proposed by the governing Social Democrats' economic spokesman Christoph Matznetter in an interview with newspaper Die Presse, Telekom Austria would still be able to offer fixed-line services but would not own the network anymore.
The spin-off owning the network would also take on the bulk of roughly 9,000 Telekom Austria employees which have civil servant status and are therefore nearly impossible to fire, making the company's cost structure very inflexible.
Such a deal could also solve some regulatory issues and ease investment into new broadband networks because the spin-off would offer access to Telekom Austria as well as its competitors on an equal basis, Matznetter said.
Telekom Austria declined to comment on the plan. (Reporting by Boris Groendahl; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)