everal telecom mega- mergers – Sprint/Nextel, AT&T/BellSouth and Alcatel/Lucent – have now occurred on paper. But how are they occurring in space and time?
   As a result of the AT&T merger with BellSouth, completed in late December 2006, AT&T's corporate headquarters will remain in San Antonio, while the new AT&T Southeast (formerly BellSouth Corporation) and Cingular will continue to be based in Atlanta.
   "Merging AT&T, BellSouth, and Cingular Wireless is expected to yield a net present value of $18 billion in synergies," said an AT&T release.
   As a condition for Federal Communications Commission approval of the $86- billion merger, AT&T announced that it "plans to repatriate 3,000 jobs currently outsourced by BellSouth outside the United States, as well as to make its disaster- recovery capabilities available in order to facilitate the restoration of services in the former BellSouth region, in the event of a hurricane or other natural disaster."
   Walt Sharp, spokesman for AT&T, says the 3,000- job pledge is separate from a promise AT&T made last year to bring 2,000 jobs back in house.
   "There's a total commitment of 5,000 jobs that are going to be brought in house as union jobs," he says, "2,000 in the legacy AT&T initiative, and 3,000 in the legacy Bellsouth initiative." While no timetable was available for insourcing the 3,000 jobs, Sharp says, "The goal on the 2,000 is by the end of 2008."
   In late February, Indianapolis was a beneficiary of that initial 2,000- job repatriation program when AT&T announced a new broadband technical support center to be created at the company's Indiana headquarters building with a $4.6- million investment. That operation will create 425 new jobs.
   "This is our Tier- 1 DSL support desk, the initial support for people who subscribe to DSL," explains Sharp. "These jobs were created along with that product as outsourced jobs to a vendor from the very beginning. We've been able to reach agreements with our unions to bring these in house under competitive contracts."
   Asked to clarify whether these were "offshored" or "outsourced" jobs, Sharp is careful to point out that the jobs coming back in house may have been outsourced domestically or overseas: "That's up to our vendors," he says. "In this case it's some of both."    The Indy project follows the June 2006 opening of AT&T's Midwest DSL center in Evansville, Ind., where its 50 employees service the company's five- state Midwest region. At the same time, the company is implementing its "High Speed to the Heartland" initiative in four rural communities. But its center is going in Evansville's "Digital Downtown Enterprise Zone."
   "We applaud all the visionary leaders that helped put Indiana at the front of a progressive telecom- reform movement that has since swept the country," said George Fleetwood, president of AT&T Indiana, at the Evansville announcement. "These jobs could have gone anywhere in the country. But they are here because Indiana created an environment that encourages companies like AT&T to invest. I'm pleased that we are expanding our operations here at home."
   The reform measure Fleetwood referred to was House Bill 1279, signed into law by Gov. Mitch Daniels in March 2006, which laid out the red carpet for telecom investments in the state by creating a statewide video franchise, thus eliminating the need for companies to negotiate cable offerings with individual communities. Texas, home to AT&T headquarters, has done the same. In addition to the rural broadband program, AT&T is investing $250 million in Indiana Internet- based television services.
   For the Indianapolis project, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation provided up to $1.0 million in tax credits, and the City of Indianapolis provided more than $279,000 in personal property tax abatement.
   Davenport, Iowa, is where a new 74,250- sq.- ft. (6,900- sq.- m.) customer service center for AT&T's wireless unit (formerly Cingular Wireless) is going, with a $19.3- million investment and the promise of 510 new jobs. At the March 21 announcement, Davenport Mayor Ed Winborn said it was the largest number of new jobs associated with one project in 20 years.
   "The Davenport jobs are not repatriated, they're just new jobs," says AT&T's Sharp.
   The Atlanta connection to the former Cingular is alive and well: Under the development leadership of Atlanta- based ADEVCO, the Davenport project will be constructed by Atlanta- based Integra Construction.    AT&T has also recently expanded its Asia Pacific service and support hub with a new customer briefing center in Singapore, part of a $750- million global capital enterprise spending program specifically geared to the global IP needs of multinational business. As in Indiana, the debut of new facilities is intimately connected to the debut of new telecom infrastructure.
   Other parts of that plan include increasing Internet Data Center (IDC) capacity by expanding several existing sites (California, Virginia, Arizona and the U.K.), and opening new data centers in the New Jersey/New York market in the U.S. and in Canada. In addition, the company's Multiprotocol Label Switching- based access in 155 countries via more than 2,000 service nodes "will include the addition of new network nodes in Vietnam, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Morocco, and the addition of three new nodes in India."
   In early April, Alcatel- Lucent announced that it plans to invest 20 million euros (US$26.8 million) in its own new Internet Protocol (IP) Transformation Center (IPTC) in Singapore. The center will employ up to 80 people, and will be co- located with a competency center launched by Alcatel- Lucent in February 2006. The Asia- Pacific IPTC complements existing IPTCs and Network Integration Centers located in Antwerp, Belgium; Lisle, Illinois and Plano, Texas.
   Again, the facility outgrowth is connected to a related infrastructure project: In this case, the "Digital Macau" initiative, announced in November 2006, is an effort by the Companhia de Telecommunicações de Macau S.A.R.L. to provide next- generation communications to support the Macau Special Administrative Region's growth.
   "The center will contribute to the infocomm ecosystem in Singapore and potentially seed the development of local independent software vendors and attract product development and system integration from Alcatel- Lucent's partners," said Chan Yeng Kit, CEO of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.