WASHINGTON —
Sprint said Friday that the 5,000 U. S. jobs the telecom firm recently pledged to create over the next 15 months are not part of an April 2015 announcement for a different 5,000 jobs.
The confusion—which prompted the company’s chief Marcelo Claure to take to Twitter in defense of the plan—arose after Donald Trump announced Sprint’s jobs commitment this week.
The president-elect claimed credit for the deal as well as an announcement earlier this month by the satellite broadband firm OneWeb of 3,000 new jobs over the next four years.
However, both new job commitments are part of a broader plan announced in October by SoftBank—which owns 80% of Sprint—to invest tens of billions of dollars in technology globally. The OneWeb project is the result of a $1.2 billion investment from the group.
SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son met Trump earlier this month, pledging to invest $50 billion in the U. S. economy and create 50,000 jobs over an unspecified time.
