The owner of the once essential Yellow Pages is planning to shed about 180 jobs in Glasgow as part of a UK-wide restructuring of the company.

Hibu has proposed ending its telesales operations in Glasgow, with the loss of the workforce, as people increasingly have little need for the business numbers listings books due to the internet and smartphones.

Formal consultation on job losses at the Scottish base is already under way. Hibu's parent company went into administration in November.

The telephone directory and digital company runs operations in the UK, US, Spain, Argentina, Chile and Peru and had a total of 12,000 employees as of last year.

It said: "Hibu is building a new, highly competitive ­digital business, while also working to manage our well-established core ­directories business in line with market opportunities. To help achieve these goals we have initiated a new programme of proposed cost efficiencies and savings as part of our ongoing restructuring to ensure a sustainable, valuable business.

"The programme supports our focus on business ­operations, initiatives and underlying sales approaches that give the greatest long-term potential and that strongly position us for accelerating digital growth.

"Regrettably, as part of this process we anticipate a reduction in our overall UK workforce, primarily through the reduction and consolidation both of our UK telesales and our customer services roles, with a proposed increase in operational activity within our overseas locations."