Pueblo officials approved economic incentives Monday night that will allow Cingular to open a customer-service call center in the city this fall.
The Atlanta-based cellphone provider requested $5.67 million from the city in incentives to pay for a new building and equipment, City Manager David Galli said.
The call center would be in downtown Pueblo along the pedestrian Riverwalk where the city had planned to locate an Indian casino, Galli said. That deal fell through last fall.
“This is money from our economic-development fund,” Galli said. “It will keep our economy going and bring in jobs.”
Cingular also plans to spend $133 million in Colorado to build 150 new cellphone sites in 2006, spokeswoman Anne Marshall said Monday. It added 1.7 million new cellphone customers nationwide in the first three months of 2006, the same number reported by Verizon.
Cingular expects to hire 500 employees by next April, she said.
“We’re very focused on competition,” Marshall said. “We get very high marks in Colorado, and we’re improving that constantly.”
Verizon spent $128 million on wireless network upgrades in Colorado in 2005, said spokesman Bob Kelley, declining to break out this year’s capital spending by state. The company expects to spend $1 billion in 2006 nationwide, Kelley said.
T-Mobile and Sprint, the other two national cellphone companies operating in Colorado, said they do not break out capital spending or number of customers by state.
Qwest has resold Sprint wireless service since Sprint bought out Qwest’s system in 2004.
Staff writer Beth Potter can be reached at 303-820-1503 or bpotter@denverpost.com.
