Employment at Orange County’s largest providers of phone service and equipment largely was stable in the past 12 months after a few years of tumultuous consolidation and shrinking staffs.
The largest 20 telecommunications companies posted a 2% decline in local workers from a year earlier to 12,152 people, according to this week’s Business Journal list.
The list includes companies that provide phone, wireless, Internet and digital TV services along with those that make and sell devices for phone networks.
Four companies saw gains, eight companies were flat, two saw declines and the numbers for four companies were Business Journal estimates. The year-ago numbers for two companies were not available.
Overall employment was dragged down by estimated job cuts at No. 1 AT & T; Inc., which has operations throughout the county. Based on input from the company, the Business Journal estimates AT & T; to be down 5% from a year earlier to 4,730 local workers.
Without AT & T;, total employment at the 19 other companies was flat with 7,422 people.
AT & T; did some restructuring in the past year, according to Andy Shibley, vice president and general manager for the greater Los Angeles area, which includes OC.
Part of the change comes from integrating the company’s wireless unit, which used to be run as a joint venture up until last year.
The integration of the wireless unit led the Business Journal to drop a subentry for AT & T;’s wireless unit that appeared in years past on our list. We did the same for No. 2 Verizon Communications Inc.
AT & T;’s local worker counts “have gone down a bit as we put these companies together and figure out what we want to do going forward,” Shibley said.
This year, AT & T; dropped the “wireless” name from its mobile unit and changed its stores into one-stop shops for all of the company’s services, not just wireless phones and services.
“You can now go into the AT & T; stores and get a lot more,home service, broadband and wireless,” Shibley said.
The company added four stores in OC this year and is set to open a few next year, he said.
Even though AT & T; declined overall, it has been adding jobs as it pushes a new line of business,installing and servicing digital TV and video recorders in homes.
The company’s U-verse TV service uses fiber-optic cables and technology similar to DSL Internet service to compete with cable TV companies, which also have moved into AT & T;’s mainstay phone service market.
AT & T; and others have seen management changes.
Chris Percy, who used to be the company’s top local guy, headed to Chicago to run AT & T;’s home products division.
In his place is Kurt Engstrom, general manager for the greater Los Angeles area.
Boost Mobile LLC, an Irvine-based unit of No. 3 Sprint Nextel Corp., also got a new general manager this year.
Boost, which markets pre-paid cell phones to people under 35 years old, nabbed Matt Carter from its parent company where he was Sprint’s senior vice president of base management.
Carter replaced Don Girskis, who left Boost Mobile to join Sunnyvale-based Shoretel Inc. in February. Carter is set to roll out a “100-day plan” to win market share for Boost, its brand strategy, according to spokeswoman Amanda Diaz.
Boost Mobile, which added about five workers this year for a total of 245, bills itself as the “youth lifestyle brand” of Sprint.
Parent Sprint cut about 45 local jobs and saw a decline of about 4%.
No. 12 Lake Forest’s Comarco Inc., a maker of wireless testing gear, was the biggest percentage decliner on the list.
It slashed about 31 jobs this year when it sold off one of its three lines of business, a drop that made for a 26% decline to 89 local workers.
In July, the company said it’s selling its business making and servicing emergency roadside call boxes for about $3 million in cash in a management-led buyout by newly formed Case Systems LLC.
The move is part of Comarco’s bid to get profitable and to zero in on its other two businesses.
The company makes power adapters that charge notebook computers, cell phones and other mobile gear. It also makes software and equipment used to test and maintain wireless networks.
Comarco has seen roughly half of its sales vanish in the past year as a big contract ended for its power adapters.
No. 4 Cox Communications Inc., which provides cable TV and phone service in South County, continued to add workers at its regional hub in Rancho Santa Margarita, which also serves Las Vegas and Santa Barbara.
Cox increased its local worker counts by 9% for a total of 1,031 people.
Most were “customer-facing” jobs in sales, according to Duffy Leone, general manager of the OC and Palos Verdes areas.
Cox has also spent millions on upgrading its network to allow for more high-definition video, Leone said.
The list, always a work in progress, has one newcomer that was omitted in past years: No. 7 Santa Ana’s Powerwave Technologies Inc., a maker of antennas, filters and power amplifiers that boost signals on wireless networks.
Powerwave has 225 workers in Santa Ana, where it has administration, a testing facility and some small-scale manufacturing.
