Orange County’s phone companies and telecommunications gear sellers added employees in the past year, their second straight yearly gain. But consolidation was the real story.
“There’s a lot of consolidation going on, and it has created a lot of new opportunities,” said Brad Boddicker, vice president and executive general manager for No. 12 Reston, Va.-based XO Communi-cations Inc.’s Southern California operations in Santa Ana.
The biggest change played out at the top of the list at No. 1 AT & T; Inc., formerly SBC Communications Inc.
SBC acquired AT & T; Corp. last year and kept Ma Bell’s name.
The result locally was a 4% job gain for the new AT & T;, after it absorbed the old AT & T;’s operations here. AT & T;, which provides phone service to most of OC, now employs 6,116 people locally.
The gain came despite a 13% drop at Cingular Wireless, which is 60% owned by AT & T.; Cingular employs 1,116 people in OC.
But Cingular’s drop wasn’t the result of cutting. The company shifted some operations to a former AT & T; Wireless building just over the county line in Cerritos.
Earlier this year, Cingular said it plans to spend $43 million building towers for wireless phone service throughout OC as part of an $800 million California spending push this year.
The county could see 75 towers added in 2007, Martha Ventura, executive director of network operations at Cingular, said earlier this year.
In another shift, No. 2 Verizon Communications Inc., which provides phone service to coastal OC, last year bought MCI Inc. of Ashburn, Va., doing away with MCI’s entry on our list. Verizon employs 3,763 people here.
Another change on this year’s list played out with Los Angeles-based TelePacific Communications’ $204 million acquisition of Rochester, N.Y.-based Mpower Communications Corp., which had an Anaheim facility.
The combination upped TelePacific five spots from last year to No. 7, nearly doubling its local work force to 140, according to a Business Journal estimate.
“In Southern California, there were no layoffs,” said Rebecca Levin, a TelePacific spokeswoman who added that Mpower’s Anaheim and TelePacific’s Irvine operation are being run independently.
“As a result of the merger, TelePacific doubled its number of access lines in service to 800,000,” she said.
TelePacific is one of a handful of companies that grew out of the telecommunications deregulation of the 1990s to compete with AT & T;, Verizon and other Baby Bells.
So is XO Communications, which last year sold a 36,000-square-foot Irvine data center to Louisville, Ky.-based Hosting.com.
XO employs 60 people in OC, unchanged from last year.
“The industry has been stale over the past several years, and the economy has hurt a lot of companies who have fewer employees,” XO’s Boddicker said. “They are looking for productivity gains with technology.”
That includes Internet calling, which lets consumers and businesses route calls over a high-speed Internet connection, Boddicker said. In business, voice over Internet protocol can be used to manage phone connections with far-flung offices.
Overall, the 15 biggest telecommunications companies operating here increased employment by 3% to 12,964 workers in the past 12 months.
The list includes phone companies, wireless service providers and sellers of telecommunications equipment.
Eleven of the companies added workers or stayed flat versus a year earlier. The Business Journal made estimates for one of these companies.
Four companies posted employment declines.
At No. 3 Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint Nextel Corp., subsidiary Boost Mobile LLC of Irvine led a 37% gain in local jobs to 1,205 people.
Boost Mobile became part of Sprint Nextel when Sprint Corp. bought Reston, Va.-based Nextel Communications Inc. a year ago. Nextel was an early Boost Mobile investor and eventual owner.
In OC, Boost Mobile employs about 184 people. That could rise to 205 by the end of the year, said Don Girskis, vice president and general manager, in a recent Business Journal interview.
Among the top entries, the No. 1 through No. 6 spots were unchanged on this year’s list.
No. 5 Toshiba Telecommunication Systems Division, part of Japan’s Toshiba Corp., is the highest ranking provider of telecommunications equipment on the list.
Falling off this year’s list was Ericsson Inc., which officially closed its Brea office.
The maker of wireless gear had seen a steady loss of jobs at the site after an industry downturn a few years ago.
