T-Mobile and Sprint have now independently backed up employment expectations from their proposed $26 billion merger bid with the announcement of plans for a New T-Mobile customer care center planned for Henrietta, serving the Greater Rochester area of Upstate New York.
Supported by the nonprofit consultancy firm, Center for Governmental Research (CGR), the companies say that Henrietta was chosen as the location where the most positive impact would occur. Analysis of the region showed the new Customer Experience Center, based on T-Mobile’s innovative Team of Experts (TEX) service model, would directly employee as many as 1300 people. That’s in addition to 500 to 600 jobs less directly created, potentially making New T-Mobile a top 20 employer in the region.
The construction portion of the project alone would result in 200 direct and 30 spillover jobs while the companies say that payroll for center employees would result in $1.5 to $1.8 million in terms of income and sales tax. Compensation and spending, once fully operational, would net a combined $2.6 to $3.2 million in income task from payroll ranging from $22.1 to $26 million. State and local sales tax would equate to $1.7 to $2 million combined.
The companies say that New T-Mobile would not be requesting or taking advantages of any ‘economic incentives’ to build out a new customer care center in Henrietta, pending approval of the merger.
T-Mobile says that it would be workers that benefit from the new center instead, pointing to multiple national and local workplace awards received over the last year. Not only does the company support diversity in the workplace. The merger and new care center would result in opportunities for employees in the form of stock grants, career development, health coverage, childcare subsidies and paid parental leave, among other things.
The independent consultancy firm estimates, based on available data from the area, that as many as 180 Henrietta workers would be able to access more than $385,000 in tuition assistance benefits too.
Lining up with previous expectations
Prior to the announcement, the companies had revealed a new service center in Fresno County’s Kingsburg and in Overland Park, Kansas. Plans are still underway for several further centers if the merger is allowed to go through. In total, the service centers and expansions on existing centers are expected to result in an additional 5,000 jobs by 2021. Previous releases from the company had indicated a figure closer to 5,600 new workers.
The total number of workers expected by 2024 is directly addressed in T-Mobile and Sprint’s most recent press release too. If the merger is approved, the companies claim that the combined entity will be able to employ more than 7,500 more customer care workers than would be possible with the pair remaining separate. That figure hasn’t changed since it was last reported.
Sprint and 5G may need this
The backing of an independent analysis firm seems to bolster the argument T-Mobile and Sprint are making with regard to jobs that can plausibly be created following a merger but employment isn’t the sole argument the two have made. The combination of network assets would also enable New T-Mobile to build out a nationwide comprehensive 5G network.
More succinctly, that would have a backbone that doesn’t restrict service to small areas or require an enormous number of radios as a result of limitations of the mmWave bands used by competitors.
While most of the focus is on T-Mobile, likely owing to the proposed name of the combined entity, the move would arguably be more beneficial to the nation’s fourth-largest current carrier, Sprint. The Overland Park-headquartered company has slipped substantially over the past several years and has gone so far as to send a 47-page letter to the Secretary of the FCC stating that it will effectively die without the deal going through.