Nextel to Add 600 to 800 Employees
Nextel Communications Inc., the wireless telecommunications firm known for building two-way radios into its cell phones, plans to hire 600 to 800 employees next year at its Orange County facilities.
The hiring spree comes on the heels of the Reston, Va., company’s restructuring of its Western operations, officials said Tuesday.
Currently, the company has about 450 employees in Orange County out of 1,037 statewide.
Most of the hires will be in sales and general operations positions, company spokeswoman Lynn Manning said.
“They’ll be working in offices throughout the county,” Manning said. “But the majority of them will be based out of our Irvine facilities.”
The company’s other regional offices are in Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Encino and two facilities in Los Angeles.
Nextel has merged its entire Southwest management team with its groups in Southern and Northern California and moved its regional headquarters to Walnut Creek from Long Beach.
With 78 million wireless users in the United States, wireless phone technology has created fierce competition. In Southern California, Nextel is battling with AirTouch, Sprint PCS, AT&T; Wireless and Pacific Bell Wireless.
Nextel is staffing up in Orange County as it looks ahead to the next battle: the pending release of Internet-ready phones, officials say. Nextel plans to incorporate MSN Web portal to supply e-mail, calendar and address book functions for an Internet-ready phone to be introduced next year.
The Nextel brand of the MSN portal also will provide Nextel wireless customers with timed or prompted notifications of stock quotes, sports scores, news and other information.
As part of this partnership with Microsoft, Nextel has said it will sell a small piece of itself to Microsoft Corp. for $600 million.
Within five years, analysts say, Internet-ready phones will be major players in telecommunications and computer access because they will be light in weight, convenient and allow users to get information from almost anywhere.
