AT&T announced Friday it will move its corporate headquarters to Dallas.

The world’s biggest telecommunications company said it is moving to Big D to “gain better access to its customers and operations throughout the world, and to the key technology partners, suppliers, innovation and human resources needed as it continues to grow.”

The headquarters move is expected to involve about 700 of AT&T’s nearly 6,000 San Antonio-based employees. The process is set to begin in the next few weeks and is expected to be completed before the end of 2008.

"We're a growing global company with customers and operations around the world," AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said, in a statement. "Being headquartered in Dallas will benefit our long-term growth prospects and human resources needs, and our ability to operate more efficiently, better serve customers and expand the business in the future.”

Southwestern Bell relocated its corporate headquarters to San Antonio from St. Louis in 1992. In 2005, SBC Communications acquired AT&T in a $16 billion transaction. San Antonio will continue to be a “major operations and employment center for us,” Stephenson said. The company's telecom operations group, which serves residential and regional business customers in 22 U.S. states, will remain in San Antonio.

AT&T noted that many of its key technology suppliers have major operations in Dallas, such as Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Huawei Technologies, Nokia, Nortel Networks, Research In Motion and Samsung.

In addition, the company said, air travel to and from Dallas will be “more convenient, time efficient and cost effective” than flying to and from San Antonio. The Dallas/Forth Worth airport is the U.S.’s third largest, offering daily nonstop service to 133 U.S. and 35 international destinations.

The telco’s wireless group, known as AT&T Mobility, will remain based in Atlanta. AT&T Labs and the company’s global business services group will be based in New Jersey, and St. Louis will continue to be home to the company's Yellow Pages directory operations.

Source:Multichannel News