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Cutthroat Lays Off Workers

In order to cut costs, Cutthroat Communications laid off about 20 percent of its workforce in Bozeman Monday.

By KAYLEY MENDENHALL, Chronicle Staff Writer

"The reason we let go of them, it was strictly cost-cutting reasons," said Jeff Marlow, Cutthroat CEO. "I don’t view this as something that will slow down our growth engine."

Marlow said five full-time employees and one part-time employee were laid off from the Bozeman operation. A few employees were also let go from an Alaska company Cutthroat acquired in November. And two of the five full-timers laid off in Bozeman may come back on a part-time basis, he said.

"We have quadrupled revenues over the last 12 months," Marlow said. "That’s not counting the acquisition we made in Alaska."

Alaska Wireless is a wireless cable company as well as a data services provider in Fairbanks, Marlow said.

"We are doing much the same thing there as we are here," he said.

Cutthroat offers broadband Internet services with high-security options to several hospitals, media companies, financial companies, insurance companies, banks and doctors’ offices in Montana.

"We provide services to anybody that would need to send secure data across the Internet," said Roger Lang, Cutthroat board chairman. "When you and I log on to buy a book at Amazon.com, we might risk the amount of limit on our Visa card. When a business is online and it’s dealing with large sums of money, other people’s money, or critical data … they can’t risk that data. That’s what we specialize in."

Cutthroat’s services cost anywhere from $100 a month to $10,000 a month depending on the customer’s needs, Lang said.

"They have a great product that’s out there and it’s well needed," said Alicia Bradshaw, executive director of the Gallatin Development Corp. "It is pretty integral when you look at the future of business growth in this area."

Access to a high-tech infrastructure is important to companies that are looking to locate here, Bradshaw said.

"We’ve had some outside companies looking at this area," she said. "We’re hoping Cutthroat will get through this and thrive."

After the layoffs, Marlow said Cutthroat employs 21 people in its office on Shedhorn Drive near Four Corners. Including the Alaska operation, Cutthroat has a total of 31 employees.

"We’re still a pretty small company," Lang said. "We have to take steps like this to continue to thrive in a tough economic market."

http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2003/05/07/news/cutthroatbzbigs.txt

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