Dallas-based AT&T shocked investors yesterday with its offer to buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. AT&T employs more than 36,000 people in Texas. T-Mobile has more than 2,000 employees in Dallas alone, according to the Dallas Morning News. We asked AT&T how the merger might affect jobs at what could soon be the largest cell phone company in the United States.
The short answer: it's too soon to say. "In terms of jobs, we expect it to be business as usual at this point, and it’s a little too early to speculate changes in up to a year," AT&T spokesman Kuriko Hasegawa wrote in an email.
Hasegawa turned the focus instead on what she said would be "improved voice and data service to our customers in Austin and Texas."
"More obviously, current T-Mobile customers will be able to receive the LTE service," she wrote.
LTE stands for Long Term Evolution and is a new standard in mobile technology that allows for maximum download rates of up to 100 megabits per second. For comparison, Time Warner's high speed Wideband internet service provides download speeds of up to 50 megabits per second.
AT&T used to be headquartered in San Antonio, but moved its headquarters to Dallas in 2008.
