AT&T announced that it has achieved a major milestone in its program to move some 5,000 high-tech jobs that had previously been outsourced back to the payrolls of AT&T's U.S. operating companies. The vast majority of the jobs had been placed offshore by contract vendors.

The company has met its goal of bringing back on shore and in-house more than 3,000 jobs that previously had been outsourced by BellSouth outside the U.S., completing this repatriation before the end of 2008. The bulk of these jobs are now located in broadband support centers in North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida and Kentucky, with most of the others scattered across states in the Southeast. Separately, the company is more than halfway toward its goal of bringing back another 2,000 outsourced jobs to locations in the former SBC territory; states where these jobs have been located include Indiana, Texas, Nevada, Michigan and Arkansas. Most of the jobs provide support for wired broadband customers.