Pacific Bell Opens Spanish Business Center

Pacific Bell has opened an office in Commerce dedicated to serving Spanish-speaking business customers and has expanded its efforts to reach other non-English speakers, especially Asians, the company has announced.

“It makes sense to do this. There’s a lot of buying power in the Hispanic and Asian communities,” said Maury Rosas, executive director of Pacific Bell’s Hispanic and Asian Market Group.

With minorities expected to make up 48% of the state’s population by the year 2000, Pacific Bell also has expanded its bilingual services to residential customers who speak Korean, Cantonese and Vietnamese, officials said. The company has offered Spanish-language residential service since 1985.

A market study commissioned by Pacific Bell found that 40% of the state’s 115,000 Latino-owned businesses would prefer to do business in Spanish, Rosas said.

As a result, the company has opened an office at 2420 Yates Ave. dedicated exclusively to serving Latino businesses, and has assigned 11 bilingual employees to staff it.

Armando Morlos of the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce called the Hispanic Business Center a “win-win situation.” The president of the 10,000-member organization predicted the idea would be copied by local phone companies in Texas and Florida, which also have large Latino populations.