What’s going to be left of Clearwire? That’s what we thought after the Kirkland broadband wireless company announced this morning that it will transition much of its customer service operations to TeleTech Holdings. As a result of the deal, 700 Clearwire employees in Florida and Nevada will transition to TeleTech.

This marks an expansion of a strategic business partnership that had already existed between Clearwire and TeleTech. But the timing is interesting, coming just two weeks after Clearwire announced that it planned to outsource its network operations to Ericsson. That also included the shift of about 700 workers.

As part of today’s agreement, Clearwire will maintain about 180 employees to handle back-end operations and other functions at the facilities in Milton, Florida and Las Vegas, Nevada. The company writes:

The agreement will help Clearwire increase efficiencies and reduce costs in the company’s customer care organization by leveraging the global resources of a leader in care center support.

John Stanton, the interim Clearwire of CEO, has a tough challenge in front of him as he attempts to streamline operations amid mounting competition from Verizon, introductions of new technologies such as LTE and complex relationships with partners such as Sprint.

The company laid off 15 percent of its workforce last fall, and has been trying to conserve cash amid a serious cash crunch. Clearwire employed about 3,500 people at the time of those cutbacks.

Previously on GeekWire
: Clearwire shareholder to CEO John Stanton: Time to sell some spectrum in order fill ‘cash hole’

 

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