Embarq outsourcing tech centers to Nokia Siemens

Embarq Corp. said Thursday it will hand over four technical service centers to Nokia Siemens Networks later this year, outsourcing the jobs of monitoring and providing technical support for its traditional telephone voice network.

Separately, the Overland Park, Kan.-based company said it will close three customer call centers that it says it no longer needs, affecting 210 jobs. That will leave Embarq with eight consumer call centers and six business call centers in the U.S.

Under the seven-year agreement with Nokia, to begin in the fourth quarter of this year, Nokia Siemens will take over centers in Gardner, Kan.; Johnson City, Tenn.; Leesburg, Fla.; and Greenville, N.C. The 256 Embarq workers in those centers will become employees of Nokia Siemens, the companies said.

Embarq spokesman Charles Fleckenstein said the move would cut costs and improve the company's efficiency and customer service.

"They have a lot of tools that would take us a big investment to duplicate," he said.

The centers monitor call traffic and can dispatch technicians to fix problems in the network. It only involves voice calls, not the company's high-speed Internet or other data services.

The companies said the deal was the first significant agreement of its kind for Nokia Siemens in North America.

"We believe that the North American marketplace hold tremendous opportunity, and this investment demonstrates our commitment to grow our business," Sue Spradley, head of Nokia Siemens' North American operations, said in a release.

Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

In what Fleckenstein said was an unrelated action, Embarq plans to close customer call centers in Las Vegas and Fort Myers, Fla., on Aug. 8 and in Clinton, N.C. on Sept. 5.

"The move is being taken because we need fewer call centers," Fleckenstein said. "The number of calls has diminished due to the business process improvements we've made since the spinoff" from Sprint Nextel Corp. in 2006.

The call centers mostly answer customer service requests from across the country, but Fleckenstein said customers shouldn't see any effect from the cuts.

He declined to discuss expected costs from closing the centers.

(This version CORRECTS that Embarq employees will become employees of Nokia Siemens instead of Nokia.)