Troubled mobile operator Lyca Mobile, which is a virtual operator (mvno) on EE’s network, has reportedly told its UK workforce that the company is facing some “pretty serious challenges” and as a result of that almost 90% of their workers (up to 316 jobs) could be made redundant.

Over the past couple of years’ the operator has certainly faced its fair share of “serious challenges“. For example, there was last year’s cyberattack (here), as well as the conviction of Lyca’s French entities for money laundering and VAT fraud (the operator is appealing against that), and a Tax Tribunal recently ruled in HMRC’s favour over a £51m (aggregate) dispute related to the VAT treatment of customer “bundles” (here). Not to mention issues with the auditing of their accounts (here) and some other things.

According to The Guardian, the company’s general counsel, David Dobbie, warned staff on Friday (13th.. of course it was) that more than 300 of them could face the chop due to issues such as competition, cost inflation, “legacy technology issues” and internal inefficiencies due to overlap between divisions based in the UK and India. No mention is said to have been made of their tax dispute.

The newspaper claims that the operator’s customer service team will also be impacted, which will see Lyca Mobile moving its support offshore to places such as India. “This proposed expansion of global service centres is going to unlock significant cost savings for us,” he said, while allegedly asking for the support of staff to “make this no harder than it needs to be”.

Cuts are also expected to be felt across other parts of the group, such as in property, media and their restaurant chain, Bella Cosa.