Charter, telecom shakeup reverberates in Rochester

• Charter says it's hiring 228 workers for a new northeast regional headquarters in Henrietta.
• Announcement comes as the telecom industry continues shakeup the local job market.

A massive shakeup in the telecommunications industry continues to twist and turn the Rochester-area job market.

Following a month of job cuts, mergers and acquisitions, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday confirmed reports that Stamford, Connecticut-based Charter Communications Inc. would bring 228 jobs to a new northeast regional headquarters for the company at an office park at 100 Town Centre Drive, off Calkins Road, in Henrietta.

Those jobs will be located next to operations currently run by Verizon Communications Inc. but scheduled to shut down in January. At this moment, nearly 650 Verizon workers face either moving outside the area to keep their jobs or finding work with other companies.

Charter said the regional center will service six states, including upstate New York, and adds to the company's operations on Mt. Hope Avenue, where it already employs roughly 460 people. The company is planning to invest about $2.9 million to get local offices ready for the additional workers.

► Charter locating regional HQ, adding jobs in Henrietta

► Frontier cutting jobs, local impact unclear

► Verizon worker describes shock, tears

"The regional office will have significant oversight," Greg McMichael, a senior vice president at Charter, told a group of roughly 100 people gathering at the office. "There will be significant hiring in the area."

The 46,000-square-foot facility is undergoing renovations that are scheduled to be completed early next year so Charter can move in sometime in March. The jobs will include customer service, call center and "highly skilled technical" positions, McMichael said.

Cuomo told the audience that Charter eyed a locations in Texas and Henrietta for the work.

"They could have bet on any region and they're betting your region," he said. "If Charter had picked another location, they would have gone. My guess is that they would have taken the whole facility and the whole workforce with them. It is very big."

Charter and several other companies operating locally have been reaching out to those displaced Verizon workers, said Robert Duffy, president and CEO of the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce.

"It doesn't fulfill all of the jobs, but it's a pretty good shot in the arm to makeup for some of these that we lost," he told reporters after Charter's announcement. "Our job is to keep the momentum going and (that) our workforce meets the demands of employers ... making sure we have the workforce ready for those jobs."

Charter strengthened its grip on the cable TV and broadband markets when it received federal approvals to acquire both Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks earlier this year. The move made Charter the country's second-largest cable TV provider with service to roughly 25.9 billion homes and businesses on Sept. 30.

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge told investors earlier this month that the integration of Time Warner Cable was on track, with Charter in the process of renaming Time Warner Cable to Spectrum. Further details on how the integration might affect local cable TV customers were not immediately available.

Windstream, EarthLink merging in $1.1B deal

The deal for Time Warner Cable continued activity in a busy telecommunications industry that saw AT&T make a $85.4 billion bid for Time Warner, the film and television production company behind HBO and other popular programming.

Other deals have involved several companies headquartered outside of Rochester but with sizable local operations. Some have announced mergers while others are simply cutting jobs.

One of those deals, a $1.1 billion acquisition of EarthLink by Windstream Holdings Inc. has already raised eyebrows from  within the office of U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer. The New York Democrat said recently he urged Windstream CEO Tony Thomas to protect Rochester-area jobs.

"These jobs are vital to the local community and economy," he said at the time. "The bottom line is that we must build on the success here in Monroe County and ensure a bright future for our local Rochester workers."

In another deal, CenturyLink plans to buy Level 3 Communications. Level 3 operates several local data centers and other operations in the Rochester area.

Frontier cutting 1,000 jobs; local impact unclear

Details on what those two deals mean for local jobs have yet to be released by Windstream and CenturyLink. Both will need to clear various regulatory approvals.

Also, Frontier Communications said recently that it is cutting 1,000 jobs across the country as part of a new restructuring effort. It informed the Texas Department of Labor last week that it would be eliminating about 205 jobs in Allen, Texas.

"There has been a lot of churn in the industry," Brighton Securities Chairman George Conboy said in a recent interview with the Democrat and Chronicle. "In looking at this I think consolidation in the industry is inevitable because there are a lot of competitors competing for space in a very tight industry and efficiency is going to be critical for all of them."

TCLAUSEN@Gannett.com