AT&T’s New Cricket Shifts, Adds Hundreds of Jobs to Atlanta
Monday, May 19th, 2014
AT&T will move hundreds of jobs into the city of Atlanta over the next year as it expands its push into no-contract wireless service, a company executive said.
The decision helps the city in its efforts to boost jobs. But it’s also another example of metro Atlanta suburban operations eyeing moves intown, bucking trends of past decades.
The jobs, in AT&T’s new Cricket Wireless subsidiary, will be based near the Lindbergh MARTA station. They include hundreds of positions new to the metro area as well as about 200 that will shift with the relocation of the company’s former Aio Wireless operation now headquartered in Alpharetta, Cricket president Jennifer Van Buskirk told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The change stems from AT&T’s recently completed $1.2 billion acquisition of San Diego-based Leap Wireless. Leap included valuable spectrum as well as the Cricket brand, which had about 4.5 million wireless customers for its pay-as-you-go mobile service.
