More than 2,400 Phones 4u staff are to lose their jobs after plans to wind up the stricken mobile phone retailer were announced on Monday night.

Administrator PWC said that 362 of the retailer’s stores will close, immediately costing 1,697 staff their jobs. Another 720 people have been retained in the short term to assist with the closure programme, the accountants added, but will then be made redundant.

The news follows the collapse of Phones 4u into administration last week after EE – which owns the Orange and T-Mobile networks – became the final mobile operator to say it would not sell phones and contracts through the stores. The move immediately put at risk the jobs of thousands of workers at 560 Phones 4u stores and a further 160 concession outlets.

The EE decision compounded an already desperate situation after Vodafone withdrew its business two weeks earlier. Rival network O2 had stopped selling through the retailer earlier this year and Three some time before that.

Rob Hunt, the joint administrator, said: “It is with much regret that we have today made the difficult decision to close a large number of stores. It is a very sad day for the staff working at those locations and our thoughts are with them. We will make every effort to help the affected staff, working with the Phones 4u HR team over the coming days to support employees.”

Monday night’s gloomy news followed confirmation that EE is to pay £2.5m to buy 58 Phones 4u stores – safeguarding 359 jobs. That deal followed an announcement on Friday that Vodafone would buy 140 Phones 4u stores, safeguarding 887 jobs. Dixons Carphone had already said it will take on the 800 staff who worked at 160 Phones 4u sites within Currys/PC World stores. In total, just over 2,000 Phones 4u jobs have been saved.

The collapse of the firm prompted a furious reaction from Phones 4u’s founder, John Caudwell, who blamed its demise on its mobile network suppliers and private equity owners, BC Partners. BC had acquired the chain in 2011 in a €770m (£610m) deal, only to allow it to be saddled with debts of £635m.

Caudwell, who started the chain of phone shops in the 1980s and sold it for £1.5bn in 2006, said Vodafone, EE and other networks had refused to supply the retailer, in a strategy to reduce competition and fatten their margins.

He also said Phones 4u’s private equity owners had left the company financially weakened so that it could not defend itself.

“It’s astonishingly ruthless. Vodafone have had millions upon millions from Phones 4u over 25 years,” he said. “It’s dreadful for British business. It gives us a terrible reputation, it destroys jobs and it’s a terribly unhealthy environment to do business in.

“The private equity houses left the business laden with debt and that weakened their ability to defend themselves and fight.”

Vodafone and EE have hit back saying that Phones 4u management had admitted privately that its inability to come up with a deal to stock the phones was down to the company’s large debts.

Vodafone said: “Phones 4u was offered repeated opportunities to propose competitive distribution terms to enable us to conclude a new agreement, but was unable to do so on terms which were commercially viable.”