AT&T to hire more than 75 U-verse employees in Arkansas

AT&T (NYSE: T) is looking to add more than 75 employees in Arkansas to address the growth of U-verse in the state. The telco wants to fill technician positions to help with U-verse installation as well as add sales consultants and customer service representatives for its call centers and retail stores.

Since the beginning of this year, the service provider has hired about 250 new workers in Arkansas and employs a total of 2,200 who reside in that state.

Ed Drilling, AT&T's state president in Arkansas, said that between 2009 and 2012, the company invested "more than $700 million" in its Arkansas wireless and wireline networks.

Driven by the company's Project Velocity IP (VIP), a three-year investment plan to expand and enhance AT&T's wireless and wireline IP broadband networks, the hiring push in Arkansas is just one in many states where AT&T is expanding its employee base. The service provider recently announced similar hiring drives in Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.

Providing greater support for its higher speed and IPTV U-verse services may enable AT&T to offer greater differentiation over smaller cable operators such as Indco Cable, which today only provides 3 to 6 Mbps over its cable network.

U-verse is a strong revenue source in AT&T's wireline division. AT&T won't release its Q2 earnings until July 23, but the telco said during a recent financial analyst meeting that it was seeing stronger U-verse broadband and TV subscriptions in the second quarter compared to Q2 2012.

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