Sprint says 5000 pledged US jobs to be new positions

Sprint said Friday that the 5,000 US 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 percent 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 US economy and create 50,000 jobs over an unspecified time.

That prompted Trump to take credit for job creation even before he assumes office in January, praising what called "the spirit and the hope" his election generated.

A Sprint spokesperson said on Friday that the 5,000 new jobs announced this week "are not related to our previous announcement about jobs and our Direct 2 You program reported on in April 2015. The announcements are unrelated."

Unlike last year's plan, the newer one is "part of Masa's 50,000 jobs commitment and it was intended to show that we are now working to help fulfill the commitment."

Claure followed Trump's example, taking to Twitter Thursday following reports that the latest Sprint job pledge is not new.

"Stop speculating," he said. "This has NOTHING to do with previously announced @sprint initiatives."

"The 5,000 jobs are NEW jobs that @sprint is creating or bringing back to the US. Great news for the country."

Sprint, which announced 2,500 layoffs in January, said the 5,000 positions will be created or brought back from overseas by the end of its 2017 fiscal year, which ends in March 2018. It has not yet decided where the jobs will be created, saying only that they will be spread across the organization.

Claure -- who held a fundraiser for Trump's Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in September, calling Trump "too risky" -- said in the announcement this week that "we are excited to work with President-elect Trump and his administration to do our part to drive economic growth and create jobs in the US."