AT&T moving headquarters to Dallas

Telecom giant AT&T announced Friday that it has outgrown its San Antonio corporate headquarters and is moving to Dallas.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson

(Credit: AT&T)

The company's rationale, according to a statement, is that Dallas will give it better access to customers and worldwide operations, and also to "the key technology partners, suppliers, innovation and human resources need as it continues to grow." Some of those technology companies with major operations in Dallas include: Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Nokia, Nortel, Research In Motion, and Samsung.

The move, which affects just 700 or so of the 6,000-some San Antonio-based employees, is expected to get under way in the coming weeks and be complete by the end of the year.

"San Antonio is a great city with much to offer and it's been good for AT&T as we've grown from primarily a five-state local phone company to the world's largest telecom company," said AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson. "San Antonio will continue to be a major operations and employment center for us."

[Perry_Clease]

Well Dallas does have "more bars in more places." :)

[tcardone05]

He's just a Mavs fan and can't get over himself. So he decided to move from a city that helped Whitacre build this massive telco to a place where he can be just like everyone else. Whitacre has been quoted as saying he doesn't like it. It's on a story at mysanantonio.com (local news website).

[Sganske]

Booooo AT&T, San Antonio is a fantastic place. You didn't have to move just because you outgrew your current facilities by 700 people. You could have found additional space in San Antonio. If you don't like San Antonio, It's hard to believe you'll like Dallas, it's all concrete, traffic, gang violence and conspicuous consumption. San Antonio has much more to offer.

[benjaminstraight]

Will they create jobs?

[Vegaman_Dan]

Typically this is a method used by corporations to reduce headcount of expensive existing jobs and personnel. They move to a new location and offer people their same jobs if they want them at the new location. If they choose not to keep their job because they don't want to move their homes or have a several hundred mile a day commute, then the company doesn't have to pay any benefits or closing costs. Those employees willingly are quitting for their own reasons. Then the company is free to hire new people at a lower cost. This is a very common practice in call centers these days.

[fdunn3]

San Antonio afforded (the then SBC) many tax initiatives and has supported SBC now AT&T throughout the years and in return they screw San Antonio and their thousands of employees to move to Dallas. Their excuse was that they could not find enough talent here and that is also BS since we have many fine Universities and Colleges in San Antonio as well as a pool of trained retired military personnel.
Time Warner is beating the pants off of AT&T's telecom and U-Verse (Read: not ready for prime time) TV service. I was a holdout and kept my cell plan and landline with them but since they pulled this I plan on dumping their landline and going with Time-Warner's Phone service since all the friends I have (including my CIO) have had no problems with it. I am also going to dump Cingular since my contract is up and I am paying ~$67/month for one phone (Voice only, no data, no SMS) and for a few dollars more I can get unlimited Voice, data, sms.

If I were the San Antonio City Council I would sue AT&T for all of the tax incentives that the city has afforded them over the years.

Since we are only about 120 miles from the US-Mexico border I can only hope that Mexico's TELMEX starts to offer service here and then maybe they wouldn't sell out to the Fed to provide unfettered taps (without a warrant) as AT&T did with even questioning the legality or ethics of it.

ALSO - For all of you AT&T U-Verse and AT&T Internet customers AT&T changed their privacy policy (yes you got a copy of it with your bill) that now states that AT&T owns all of the records of history of your usage and can and will do anything with that data that is in the interest of the company.

Fred Dunn

[oorfenegro]

Dallas has non stop flights to everywhere...ATT exes traveling to the far flung reaches of their empire usually had to make a connection in Dallas, so somebody probably said why not save at least two hours moving to DFW. Boeing execs really didn't want to leave Seattle but the number crunchers figured that Boeing would save lots of money by being in Chicago, which is 3 and a half hours or less from any place in the US and with three airline hubs, there are more nonstops from Chicago than anyplace else in the US

[JCPayne]

That's the way of American Business no loyalty to the American people in any way shape or form.

[althegal]

Um, last time I checked, Dallas was still in America.

[Renegade Knight]

Like Dallas needs more traffic and more people. If they really want to move they should move to some starving town that has 700 empty homes and a dying business district.

While Dallas may have "better access" for the AT&T folks who like to drive down the block to say hello to a business partner, it's not like AT&T doesnt' know how to CALL their partners.

[cordeliachase]

Just so you know Dallas is not getting a bargain here, Randall has decided that he doesn't like the bus stop in front of the building he will be at because he does not want to see those kind of people. you know the ones that work for AT&T. The non-management ones. He has also decided he does not want trees in the courtyard because homeless people might congregate there. So he is having them ripped up. Trees that have been there for over 100 years. Please San Antonio take this ego driven meglomaniac back!!!!