Orange County’s phone companies and telecommunications gear sellers saw local employment shrink in the past year, after a couple of years of gains.
The 22 telecommunications companies, which have seen fallout from consolidation in the past few years, posted an 8% decline in local workers to 13,258, according to this week’s Business Journal list.
This year the ranking was expanded with six companies. It features companies that provide land line, mobile, Internet and digital TV services along with those that make and sell devices for phone networks.
The total employment figure was dragged down by No. 2 Verizon Communications Inc., which saw big worker cuts. Excluding Verizon, employment dropped 3% to 10,251 jobs. Five companies posted worker gains. Five cut jobs and 10 were flat, while two were estimates.
No. 1 AT & T; Inc., including its wireless subsidiary, bucked the trend. The San Antonio-based company saw its ranks swell by an estimated 9%, or about 500 jobs locally, to 6,000 people.
SBC Communications Inc. bought AT & T; Corp. in 2005 and took on the AT & T; name. It also owns AT & T; Wireless, formerly Cingular Wireless, which employs an estimated 1,000 workers here. AT & T; entered new territory this year: installing and servicing digital TV and digital video recorders.
“It’s been a tremendous year,” said Chris Percy, vice president and regional manager for AT & T.; “We are now providing television service in Orange County, and that has driven increased staffing.”
AT & T; brought on several people to help build out its fiber-optic network for digital TV customers, Percy said.
About 100,000 customers have signed up for the service so far, Percy said.
Another big launch this year,Apple’s iPhone,generated a lot of buzz for AT & T; and fueled some of the hiring. AT & T; is the sole wireless service provider for the iPhone.
When the phone was released at the end of June, AT & T; stores around the county were swamped with eager early-adopters, some who camped out to be the first in line.
“We hired a lot of staff in all of our stores for the launch,” Percy said. “The iPhone is very integrated with our services.”
Customers can hook up their iPhones to its TV service to program shows they want to record on digital video recorders at home, among other tasks.
AT & T; also opened a couple of local stores this year, including ones in Irvine and Tustin.
Job cuts at No. 2 Verizon Communications continued as the company pushed forward with a three-year cost-cutting plan. The company held its spot but dropped its workforce by 19% to 3,047 people. The company’s Verizon Communications unit, which sells land phone lines and services to companies, cut its workforce by more than half, fueling the decline.
No. 4 Atlanta-based Cox Communications Inc. grew local employment 13% in the past year to 944 workers to handle rising demand for its digital TV service and for the construction of a regional operating center here.
Cox built a regional hub in its 300,000-square-foot office in Rancho Santa Margarita and hired more people to staff it. The center is set to serve new markets for Cox, including Santa Barbara, Palos Verdes and Las Vegas, according to Duffy Leone, its regional vice president.
“We are coming up on our 10-year anniversary in Orange County,” Leone said.
Cox corporate “turned to us to be the back office for some of our new launch markets,” he said.
It also saw growth in its services to businesses.
The company counts more than 12,000 local businesses as customers, Leone said.
Last week, Cox announced that it “wired” two of OC’s biggest employers,Saddleback Valley and Capistrano school districts as well as Long Beach’s school district. No. 3 Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint Nextel Corp., along with its subsidiaries, had 1,154 workers. Sprint brought Boost Mobile on board through its 2005 acquisition of Reston, Va.-based Nextel Communications Inc.
Nextel was an early investor of Boost Mobile and eventually bought the startup, which posted a 30% increase, or 56 workers, to 240 people.
“Growth is explosive in consumer need for applications such as mobile, navigation and video,” said Kevin Kunkel, area vice president for Southern California.
Sprint’s business customers have been demanding fleet management and tracking services, where global positioning systems are used to track delivery trucks, Kunkel said.
“The primary initiative for all of Sprint is to substantially enhance our data wireless network to speeds that allow people to do things anywhere and any time,” he said.
The company has about a dozen stores in OC.
No. 5 Time Warner Cable Inc. held its place with about 600 local workers, the same as a year ago.
No. 6 T-Mobile USA Inc., based in Bellevue, Wash., also was flat with 400 employees.
No. 8 Comarco Wireless Technologies Inc., a unit of Irvine’s Comarco Inc. and newcomer to the list, cut about 22 jobs.
Comarco Wireless makes power adapters that charge notebook computers, cell phones and other mobile devices. Comarco, best known for making and servicing emergency call boxes found on highways, has a handful of disparate businesses under one roof. It recently hired financial consultants to help it revamp its business strategy.
Newcomer No. 12 Qwest Communications International Inc. grew its local workers by 25%. Echoing the Baby Bells of the past, which broke off from Ma Bell after the government deregulated the industry, Qwest said it’s winning business away from the big guys, according to Mark Amico, sales director for Southern California, Nevada and Hawaii.
“In the past few years there’s been a big turn in telecom spending, and people are opening up to the ideas that are out there,” Amico said. “The consolidations of AT & T; and Verizon have left it open for us to gain some market share in Southern California.”
Qwest, which targets businesses in the small to midsize range, said its customers are adopting newer technologies, such as voice over Internet protocol, which routes calls over a high-speed Internet connection.
“Voice over IP has been a buzz word for about eight years now,” Amico said. “But it’s finally ready for primetime because both the network and the equipment mesh seamlessly.”
After adding sales and support staff this year, Qwest is likely to hold steady on local hiring next year, Amico said.
