AT&T, Verizon hiring and wiring in North Texas
AT&T is looking to hire approximately 1,000 workers in the Metroplex to help carry out its cutting-edge television and high-speed Internet plans over the next few years.
The San Antonio-based telecommunications giant isnÂ’t alone. Verizon officials say they have stepped up hiring as the company implements its FiOS Internet and television services across the area and the state. While Charter Communications officials wouldnÂ’t say if they were hiring any additional personnel, officials said they were investing heavily in new products and services in the area.
AT&T officials point directly to a reason for all the hiring: the passage of Senate Bill 5, the telecommunications reform bill that was signed into law in September 2005.
“That law enabled all of this,” said Gary Terry, regional vice president for external affairs for AT&T Texas. “The passage of that law gave us a platform to compete with the cable companies out there and we’ve responded by investing in new technologies and new jobs.”
The law deregulated phone service in many areas of the state, allowed for additional data deployment and set up statewide video franchising to replace local video franchising. Similar laws have been passed in several states since Texas passed its law, and other states are now debating telecommunications deregulation, according to telecom officials. Passage of the bill wasnÂ’t easy. Cable operators fought it, arguing that it created a market that favored the phone companies.
Terry said the company has held several job fairs in the area and, at times, hired people right on the spot.
“If they’ve got all their information together and can do it, we’ve hired them on the spot,” he said.
AT&T currently has about 4,700 employees in Tarrant County.
Much of the hiring is related to the launch of AT&T U-verse services that happened earlier this month. Dallas-Fort Worth is one of 14 markets across the county where the company is rolling out the service. U-verse provides an Internet-based television service, giving users a wide variety of cable channels, 25 High Definition (HD) channels and high-speed Internet access.
While Verizon officials wouldnÂ’t point directly to Senate Bill 5 as the reason for its area expansion, company officials said the passage of the bill fit in with their plans to roll out the new high-speed Internet and advanced television services, called FiOS. The company originally rolled out the service in Keller and recently began offering it in north Fort Worth.
“We started out building our fiber-optic network in Keller when Senate Bill 5 was just a pipe dream,” said William Kula, director of area media relations for Verizon. “All told, we’ve added about 1,400 to the area since January of ’04 and spent hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in the area in building the network.”
Investment for these new services is steep. To install FiOS, Verizon has so far installed more than 25 million feet of fiber-optic cable. AT&T said it planned to invest an additional $800 million in Texas to build out its video and high-speed Internet network. Cable companies have not been standing still in the face of this new competition either.
“It’s an exciting time in the industry,” said Kevin Allen, director of government relations for Charter Communications in Texas. “We’ve been busy rolling out our phone services and high-speed Internet offerings.”
While the cable industry opposed many of the provisions of Senate Bill 5, Allen said the winner has turned out to be the consumer.
“There are a lot of offerings out there because of the competition,” he said. “There are still some aspects of the law that we in the cable industry don’t feel are fair, but we’re out there competing and doing well. The real winner has been the consumer, no doubt about that.”
Bill Peacock, director of the Center for Economic Freedom, a part of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin, said the law appears to be doing what it was intended to do.
“Sure enough, everyone is making the investments they said they would,” he said. “The telecom companies made a lot of promises as that legislation was being debated, but AT&T and Verizon have spent millions in the state. You can hardly drive down a street in Austin without seeing an AT&T truck doing some work related to building out their network.”
Contact Francis at rfrancis@bizpress.net
