New AT&T call center will provide 425 jobs

INDIANAPOLIS – AT&T will hire 425 people for previously-outsourced call-center jobs under an initiative to reinvest in the state after a sweeping telecommunications reform bill passed the Indiana Legislature last year.\nAT&T will create the technical support jobs for its national broadband operations at its state headquarters in downtown Indianapolis, George Fleetwood, president of AT&T Indiana, said at a Statehouse news conference Tuesday.\nThe union jobs will pay more than $40,000 annually in wages and benefits, he said.\nAT&T already has begun hiring managers for the call center, but full staffing might not occur until 2009, company spokesman Mike Marker said. The center is due to start taking calls in July.\nThe state will provide up to $1 million in training funds and income tax credits, and the city will provide more than $279,000 in personal property tax abatement to AT&T, which will invest more than $4.6 million in new equipment and other upgrades, state and local economic development officials said.\nThe call center jobs previously had been outsourced, but AT&T chose to bring them back in-house at Indianapolis because the passage of the telecom reform bill encourages the industry to invest in the state, Fleetwood said.\n“I think these jobs could have been placed anyplace in the country where we do business,” Fleetwood said. Of about 20 states that have tackled telecommunications reform in the last few years, Indiana has done so most comprehensively.\n“We at AT&T believe no one has done it better than Indiana,” he said.\nThe General Assembly last year approved legislation that frees telephone companies from state regulations and changes the way the cable industry works.\nSince then, in addition to Tuesday’s announcement, AT&T and Verizon have announced they would expand high-speed DSL Internet service to 102 rural communities, and Verizon and Comcast have said they will create 375 new jobs in the state. AT&T last month also launched an Internet television service in Anderson, Bloomington, Indianapolis and Muncie, among just 11 markets nationally, Fleetwood said.\nGov. Mitch Daniels and lawmakers also have said that Indiana consumers can expect to see lower prices for cable and other services.\nDaniels said AT&T had promised to invest more in Indiana if the reforms passed.\n“I’m just thrilled that their response has been not only so large and so fast, but, as George just said, stretches from our smallest towns ... to now the heart of our largest city,” Daniels said.\n“The single best thing that we can do is build the best sandbox in America, build the best environment and climate for companies of all kinds,” Daniels said.\nPeterson said cities and towns were grateful that the Legislature, AT&T and the Daniels administration considered their interests in the deregulation.\n“We really feel that we were not just listened to but respected and were able to have some meaningful input into the final piece of legislation,” Peterson said.