The road to wireless telecom headquarters these days seems to lead to the nation’s Lone Star state. Dallas, the eighth largest city in the country, has captured the interest of some of the industry’s largest players.
Nokia Corp. is said to be looking for a second plant location near Fort Worth, Texas, just a stone’s throw west of Dallas. PCS PrimeCo L.P., the Baby Bell consortium that was a big winner in the recent personal communications services spectrum auctions, also is searching for Dallas-area headquarters. The undetermined location also will serve as a regional center.
“It’s a convenient spot for us. With our partners, we have operations all over the country,” said Susan Rosenberg, spokeswoman for AirTouch Communications Inc.
Other PrimeCo consortium partners include Denver-based U S West Inc., Philadelphia-based Bell Atlantic Corp. and White Plains, N.Y.-based Nynex Corp.
“The cost of living there (Dallas) is affordable and they have a good base of skilled, technical workers,” Rosenberg said.
Dallas is known as the “Silicon Prairie,” because it employs the greatest number of high-tech workers in the Southwest, said Michelle Baker with the Greater Dallas Chamber. Because Texas is a “right to work” state, only 13.9 percent of manufacturing employees are labor union members.
Texas collects no personal or corporate income tax, nor state property tax. It offers a grab bag of financial incentives to interested industries, such as tax abatements, fee rebates, enterprise zones, free port tax exemptions and expedited permitting. In addition, Dallas ranks ninth in the world and fourth in the nation as a headquarters site for multinational corporations, the Chamber said.
Nokia is looking for a second factory site in the Fort Worth area to build PCS infrastructure equipment and host a research and development unit focusing on a Global System for Mobile communications systems.
Fort Worth, with a population just under 500,000 but population growth of 16.2 percent, often is considered a part of the Dallas metroplex. Nokia opened its first cellular phone manufacturing facility there in 1992 in an industrial complex near the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, located between the two cities. It is the world’s second busiest airport. Its Central time zone location allows U.S. business travelers to visit the East or West coast and return the same day, the Dallas Chamber said.
Nokia announced last November plans to build a state-of-the-art cellular phone manufacturing plant in Fort Worth in the Alliance international business center close to the Fort Worth Alliance airport. Alliance’s designation as a foreign trade zone provides significant economic advantages for the import/export operation, Nokia said.
When Nokia’s new plant opens later this year, it is expected to be staffed with about 2,000 people; the state of Texas agreed to provide Nokia with a $2,000-per-employee training allowance through its Smart Jobs program.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram further reported Nokia received tax abatements from the city and county valued at more than $9 million over 10 years.
The Chamber also reports Dallas has the fourth largest concentration of producers and users of advanced technologies in the country. So it’s no wonder Nokia is considering the Fort Worth area again, although no specific location has been named.
“The decision on the new location will be taken within the next few weeks, and our goal is to become operational in early 1996,” said Jyrki Salo, president of Nokia Telecommunications Inc., the Finland-based corporation’s U.S. sales company.
Other wireless players in the area include the nation’s largest paging operator, Paging Network Inc., which has headquarters in Plano, a municipality north of Dallas.
Northern Telecom Inc. is located in the booming city of Richardson, also north of Dallas, between Dallas and Plano. L.M. Ericsson also has its U.S. headquarters in Richardson. Southwestern Bell Mobile Systems, another PCS auction winner, has headquarters in Dallas, as does PageMart Inc., one of the nation’s top paging operators.
