T-Mobile sets site for Kingsburg call center, 1,000 jobs. Where, when are they coming?
A long-awaited T-Mobile call center anticipated to bring 1,000 jobs to Kingsburg now has a confirmed site set for the Fresno County city.
T-Mobile confirmed that it had signed a lease for the former Kmart space on Sierra Street, west of Highway 99. At more than 95,000 square feet, Kmart was Kingsburg’s largest retailer before the store closed in March 2017. The terms of the lease were not disclosed, but a 2019 financial analysis for the project estimated that annual lease costs for the call center would be about $1.5 million.
“In the coming weeks, T-Mobile plans to begin demolition and start improvements to the building – consistent with the city’s heritage and aesthetic – to prepare for the center to serve customers starting in 2022,” the company said in a statement.
T-Mobile first announced its plans to locate its new “customer experience center” in Kingsburg almost two years ago, as the mobile-phone carrier was in the midst of engineering a merger with rival Sprint.
But the location came with a catch – the call center, and its promise of 1,000 new jobs for Kingsburg and surrounding areas of Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties, would only become a reality if the $26 billion merger was approved by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission.
The Kingsburg location and its jobs, as well as other call centers proposed by the wireless companies, became a major talking point of a lobbying and public relations campaign by T-Mobile pushing for the merger.
Federal antitrust regulators approved the merger in July 2019, followed by the FCC. The state of California and several other states sued to block the merger based on concerns about diminished competition in the cellular market, but a federal judge ultimately ruled in favor of the merger.
Prior to the merger, T-Mobile and Sprint were the third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers in the U.S., well behind Verizon and AT&T. The merger vaulted the new combined company into a more solid third place. To allay federal antitrust concerns, T-Mobile was required to sell off the popular Boost Mobile prepaid wireless service, and other Sprint assets are being sold to DISH, the satellite TV provider that will now get into the wireless phone business.
The 2019 economic analysis commissioned by T-Mobile forecast that the Kingsburg call center would have 1,007 employees. “T-Mobile estimates that employees at the center will have an average weekly compensation between $1,129 and $1,254” in both salary and benefits,” the analysis by Berkeley Research Group stated. Total payroll at the center – which would be expected to be fully staffed and operational in 2022 – is expected to be between $56 million and $65 million a year.
