 
|
|||||||||
              
|
Marconi adding 1,000 jobs
Wednesday, April 26, 2000 By Frank Reeves, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Marconi Communications, the global telecommunications and network equipment company, plans to add 1,000 jobs at its headquarters in Marshall, the former home of Fore Systems.
Company officials, joined by Gov. Ridge, are scheduled to announce the expansion this morning, nearly a year to the day since Marconi PLC, the British parent of Marconi Communications, bought Fore for $4.5 billion.
Marconi Communications currently employs about 1,300 at the former Fore campus, up 300 from when the acquisition was announced.
The 1,000 jobs will be phased in over the next two to three years. As many as 70 percent of the new positions are expected to be in manufacturing and engineering, a company spokesman said. The remainder are expected to be in such areas as marketing, sales and accounting.
To accommodate the additional workers, Marconi will follow through on Fore's plans to build six buildings at its RIDC Thorn Hill Industrial Park complex, doubling the facilities' space to 750,000 square feet.
Ridge's presence at today's announcement is more than symbolic. Marconi has received about $5.6 million in state assistance to expand its local operations, including job-creation tax credits, loans for building construction and land acquisition, and grants for job training.
Fore already was one of the region's most prominent technology companies when Marconi PLC acquired it. It was a home-town success story, a fast-growing, Internet-driven start-up founded by four Carnegie Mellon University researchers in 1990.
The core of its product mix revolves around high-speed computer networking switches based on asynchronous transfer mode, or ATM, technology developed by the CMU researchers. The technology enables voice, video and data to be transmitted over computer networks quickly and clearly.
|
||||||||
