You might recall that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson made some waves last year when he stated the telecom giant was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the States from India. As of last March, AT&T had only managed to bring back 1,400 of those promised 5,000 jobs, Stephenson blaming the US education system (not cost savings by AT&T) as a major reason why.

If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn’t put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down. -AT&T CEO Randal Stephenson, on the U.S. education system

“If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn’t put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down,” said Stephenson of the US education system in 2008. “We’re able to do new product engineering in Bangalore as easily as we’re able to do it in Austin, Texas — I know you don’t like hearing that, but that’s the way it is.”

Apparently AT&T was able to find 1,600 well (or well enough) educated Americans in a little less than a year after all. The company today announced that they’ve now brought back 3,000 of the 5,000 promised jobs. The outsourced jobs had largely been for BellSouth, with the bulk of the new support jobs now located in broadband support centers in North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Kentucky.

“We expect to complete this ambitious 5,000 job in-sourcing initiative by this summer, less than three years after the program was announced,” said Bill Blase, senior executive vice president of Human Resources. “These are good jobs with good wages and benefits, and we are delighted to have them back in-house and on shore.”
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