Download the 2010 OC TELECOMMUNICATIONS COS List (pdf)
Providers of phone, Internet and data services and related equipment cut jobs in Orange County in the past 12 months as the tepid economic recovery has been slow to lift demand.
The 26 biggest telecommunications companies here employ 10,195 people, down 9% from a year earlier, according to this week’s Business Journal list.
The list is made up of a broad group of companies—providers of traditional phone and wireless services, high-speed Internet and digital TV as well as equipment makers and service providers for phone and wireless networks.
Many have cut jobs as corporate customers have yet to fully recover from the recession and consumer demand for wireless phones and other services softens.
Six companies on the list, including the two biggest, reported or are estimated to have seen job cuts. Five companies added jobs. Four were flat. Eleven were Business Journal estimates.
No. 1 Dallas-based AT&T Inc., with operations in Anaheim and elsewhere in the county, was the biggest decliner by actual jobs cut.
AT&T’s local employment was down 19% as it cut some 800 jobs here for a total of 3,500 employees. Even with the cuts, AT&T makes up about a third of the total jobs on the list.
The company provides phone service to businesses and most residents of the county and also sells wireless and digital TV services.
Without AT&T, the 25 other companies on the list posted a 4% decline to 6,695 workers.
No. 2 New York-based Verizon Communications Inc., which provides phone service to coastal OC and also sells wireless and digital TV services, is estimated to have cut 200 jobs here, a 7% decline, for a total of 2,500 local workers.
For the past few years, Verizon, which employs more than 200,000 people companywide, has been cutting thousands of jobs a year across the country.
The company’s local workers are spread out among wireless stores, a customer service center and a phone service hub in Huntington Beach.
Some Verizon customer service jobs were shifted to Sacramento, according to spokesman Ken Muche.
He described local employment as “steady” now.
Sprint
Another big decliner was No. 5 Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint Nextel Corp., which restructured its operations in Irvine.
Sprint employs 571 workers here, down nearly 28% from a year earlier. It slipped down one spot on the list from last year.
The job cuts came after Sprint’s November acquisition of prepaid cell phone operator Virgin Mobile USA Inc. for $483 million.
Sprint folded New Jersey-based Virgin into its own prepaid wireless business, Irvine-based Boost Mobile LLC, which now goes by Sprint prepaid group.
Sprint no longer breaks out Boost Mobile’s employee figures, so it doesn’t appear on the list as it has in year’s past.
As a result of the restructuring, “there have been some employee relocations from Irvine,” spokeswoman Heather Wong said.
Sprint’s been slashing its workforce for some time. From late 2008 to April of this year, the company has cut more than 10,000 jobs companywide.
No. 6 T-Mobile USA, part of Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG with operations in Santa Ana, held its spot on the list with an estimated 325 workers, roughly flat from a year ago.
No. 7 Santa Ana’s Powerwave Technolo-gies Inc., a maker of antennas, filters and other gear for wireless network towers, has been struggling to maintain growth amid a widespread shortage in supplies.
“We continue to experience longer than normal order lead times for a wide variety of electronic components,” Chief Executive Ron Buschur recently told analysts.
Powerwave is thought to have cut jobs here in the past 12 months. The Business Journal estimates the company at some 260 workers here, down from about 290 a year earlier.
No. 12 New York’s Paetec Communi-cations Corp., which has operations in Irvine, added a handful of local workers after a June acquisition.
Paetec added 27 workers here for a total of 77. The move bumped Paetec up from No. 18 on last year’s list.
Paetec’s publicly traded parent, Paetec Holding Corp., acquired Sacramento-based Quagga Corp. for undisclosed terms.
A big reseller of Avaya Inc.’s Internet-based voice and video systems for midsize and large businesses, Quagga had a sales and customer support operation in Irvine.
Quagga’s local workers joined Paetec’s local office, which is the company’s sales and customer service hub for regions west of Texas, according to spokesman Chris Muller.
Additions
The list, always a work in progress, has several additions this year.
The highest ranking debut is No. 20 Denver-based Latisys Corp., a newcomer that landed on our radar with the recent news that it’s set to triple its data center space here.
Latisys is planning to add almost 100,000 square feet to its operations in Irvine, where it runs warehouses full of servers and other data storage gear and contracts with companies to store their databases and programs.
Siemens Enterprise Networks Inc., a unit of Germany’s Siemens AG with operations in Cypress, came off the list after exiting the telecom equipment business in late 2008.
