The wireless industry has been a driver of U.S. economic growth and a creator of jobs for years. What will 2016 bring?
Carriers
Sprint and Verizon Wireless are both cutting jobs and reorganizing. Sprint began to reduce headcount in mid-December and expects the current round of layoffs to be complete by the end of January. Verizon Wireless has not said how many jobs will be cut, but did say in October the reorganization of its wireless unit will lead to an unspecified number of job cuts.
AT&T and T-Mobile US sure to see their share of resumes from talent the other two nationwide carriers let go. Cable operators, wireless equipment vendors and software startups are also likely landing places for people who leave Sprint or Verizon.
Equipment vendors
Nokia closed on its acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent shortly before the end of 2015, and did not announce any impending job cuts at that time. European regulators pressured both companies to protect European jobs as a condition of the merger, so any layoffs that result from the union may occur in other geographies. Both companies have large numbers of employees in the Dallas area, with Alcatel-Lucent employing 1,200 people in Plano, Texas, and Nokia employing a smaller number at its Irving, Texas, campus, which is one of eight corporate locations for Nokia in the United States.
Other equipment vendors are expected to add jobs in select areas in 2016. Software development and wireless network densification are two areas likely to grow by adding jobs. Huawei has been hiring aggressively in the United States, picking up executives from carriers and from other equipment vendors. Meanwhile, Ericsson has been realigning its workforce for some time now, and that process has included layoffs. So far most of the jobs cuts have been outside the United States.
Infrastructure service providers
The companies that build and maintain wireless infrastructure are highly dependent on carrier spending. When carriers cut back, some of their contractors cannot maintain their payrolls while they wait for business to pick up again.
2015 was a difficult year for some contractors, especially those that depended heavily on AT&T, which reduced network spending while it was in the process of acquiring DirecTV, Iusacell and Nextel Mexico. Now that those acquisitions have closed, contractors say AT&T’s network spending is coming back.
AT&T contractor Velocitel said it plans to add jobs in several parts of the U.S. during 2016, and Goodman Networks is hiring for AT&T’s DirecTV unit in Boston, Memphis, and New Jersey. Goodman has a longstanding relationship with AT&T and owns Multiband, that company that does most of DirecTV’s home satellite installations.
Infrastructure service providers are seeing steady workflows from Verizon Wireless, and in many states T-Mobile US is also very active. Sprint has triggered an enormous wave of hiring at Mobilitie, the company expected to oversee deployment of thousands of small cells for the carrier. In 2016 this hiring wave should trickle down to subcontractors.
Google may also be hiring infrastructure service providers in the year ahead. To date the company has relied on spectrum leased from Sprint and T-Mobile US to supplement its Wi-Fi-based Google Fi service. But sources say Google is now talking directly to wireless infrastructure service providers.
Chip vendors
Contraction is expected in the year ahead, led by the industry’s largest wireless chipmaker Qualcomm. The company started a round of more than 1,300 layoffs in San Diego in September. Investors may pressure Qualcomm for even more belt tightening as the company refuses to separate its chip design business from its patent business.
Two other U.S. wireless chipmakers have recently been acquired by non-U.S. companies. Singapore’s Avago is buying Broadcom and The Netherlands’ NXP has purchased Freescale. NXP said it expects to minimize layoffs in customer-facing areas and in research and development, but it will look for overlap in support areas as it brings the two companies together.
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