FRANKFURT (AP) -- Deutsche Telekom AG's chief executive said he expects job cuts at the country's biggest telephony provider as a result of high state debts.

"Middle to long term, I'm expecting setbacks," Rene Obermann, the company's CEO, told the Handelsblatt daily in its Monday edition.

"Consumers and companies will still have to pay a price for high state debts," Obermann said.

Deutsche Telekom, based in Bonn, would have to prepare for such setbacks, he said, through solid finances and reserves. But the company will also probably have to cut numbers off the payroll.

For the coming year Obermann said the company would have to cut positions, like those of technicians, that were increasingly becoming displaced by automation and technology. But other departments in the Telekom would hire people, he said without elaborating.

According to the report, Telekom will unveil a new savings and efficiency plan in February. It hopes to make the reductions through attrition, as it has done in the past.

Shares of Deutsche Telekom were about 1.4 percent higher at euro9.63 ($14.44) in Frankfurt afternoon trading.

http://www.deutschetelekom.com