In addition to building out its LTE network, taking out ads punching back at AT&T and completing its deal to merge with MetroPCS, it seems the No. 4. U.S. carrier is also prepping layoffs, though it is keeping quiet on the details.

The cutbacks are expected to hit as early as tomorrow and could result in more than 100 job losses, according to the Seattle Times, which first reported the impending layoffs.

A T-Mobile representative declined to comment.

The timing of the cuts comes just as it appears the merger deal has passed the final hurdles. MetroPCS noted on Tuesday that the federal antitrust review period has ended, and the company has slated an April 12 meeting for its shareholders to approve the deal.

Although some jobs will no doubt be cut as part of the deal, T-Mobile is expected to keep much of MetroPCS’ separate brand and large retail presence even as it works to quickly transition MetroPCS customers to devices that run on the T-Mobile network.

The company is cutting roughly 4,000 jobs, 20 percent of the company’s roughly 20,000 workers, according to a source familiar with the company’s plans. About two-thirds of the reductions will be from outside the U.S.

“While Motorola expects this strategy to create new opportunities and help return its mobile devices unit to profitability, it understands how hard these changes will be for the employees concerned,” a Motorola representative told AllThingsD. “Motorola is committed to helping them through this difficult transition and will be providing generous severance packages, as well as outplacement services to help people find new jobs.”

The company also plans to close about a third of Motorola’s 94 facilities, with a focus on keeping hubs in Sunnyvale, Calif., Chicago and Beijing. It also announced two weeks ago that Motorola would move its Libertyville, Ill., facilities into downtown Chicago’s Merchandise Mart building.

Google has made a number of leadership changes since closing the Motorola acquisition in May, but has yet to go into detail on its product strategy, beyond saying it expected to focus on fewer products.

Former CEO Sanjay Jha left when the deal closed, as did top executives Christy Wyatt, Bill Ogle, John Bucher and Juergen Stark, among others.

New leaders include Motorola unit head Dennis Woodside and former DARPA chief Regina Dugan, who joined Google in March and will lead an advanced technology group within Motorola.

Other Woodside recruits include former Amazon and Nokia executive Mark Randall, and Vanessa Wittman, the former CFO of Marsh & McLennan.

The uncertainty surrounding Motorola’s future is one of the big unknowns heading into next year, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said last week during a meeting with several reporters.

Google’s plans to cut staff at Motorola were reported earlier on Sunday by the New York Times.

Consumer Cellular said on Wednesday that it will sublease a Redmond, Ore., facility and hire upward of 650 people to work at the 77,000-square-foot facility previously run by T-Mobile.

The small, Oregon-based carrier, which is best known for its sales relationship with AARP, said it will open its operations there on Aug. 1. Consumer Cellular said it is working with T-Mobile and several state and local government agencies.

“Consumer Cellular is thrilled to work with T-Mobile and this qualified team of economic development organizations to help save jobs in our state while increasing our operations to meet the needs of our rapidly expanding customer base,” Consumer Cellular CEO John Marick said in a statement. “Having a move-in ready facility with a high-quality existing workforce made perfect sense for us, and we’re looking forward to expanding in the state of Oregon and becoming a part of the Redmond community.”

It’s also a boost to the region, which officials noted already had one of the highest levels of unemployment in the state. Consumer Cellular has existing call centers in Phoenix and Portland, its headquarters.

T-Mobile USA announced in March that it was closing seven call centers, including the Redmond facility, resulting in 3,300 job losses (though it plans to hire 1,400 workers elsewhere). It has since announced a further 900 job cuts.

“In a short period of time, T-Mobile has re-emerged as a vibrant competitor in the mobile marketplace,” an FCC representative told AllThingsD in an email. “Competition benefits all wireless consumers. The bottom line is that AT&T’s proposal to acquire a major competitor was unprecedented in scope and the company’s own confidential documents showed that the merger would have resulted in significant job losses.”

On Thursday, T-Mobile said it was closing seven call centers, in a move that will lead to the loss of at least 1,900 jobs.

AT&T, which had promised not to cut call-center jobs, held out T-Mobile’s plans as proof that the country would have been better off had the deal been approved, a notion the FCC quickly took issue with.

The cuts are part of a plan announced last month to cut about 4,000 jobs at smartphone manufacturing plants at Salo, Reynosa in Mexico and Komarom in Hungary, in a push to move device assembly closer to components suppliers in Asia.

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Sprint CEO Dan Hesse

As part of that move, Sprint combined its business and consumer units. Also, as a result, the company said four top executives were leaving the company.

The company confirmed on Friday that the reorganization will result in deeper job cuts, though it did not give an exact number.

“The latest job reductions are a further extension of this consolidation,” Sprint spokesman Scott Sloat said in an email. “Sprint’s workforce is approximately 40,000 employees and we do not expect this to change significantly with this reorganization. Sprint continues to hire new employees into positions that support our corporate strategy.”

The job cuts were reported earlier by cellular industry publication Fierce Wireless. Fierce Wireless pegged the number of job cuts at fewer than 100 positions.

The three affected plants focus on smartphone production, and Nokia said it planned to shift much of that work to Asia, in order to be closer to its suppliers and speed up the time it takes to get products ready. Nokia will continue to do some customization work at all three plants.

“With the planned changes, our factories at Komarom, Reynosa and Salo will continue to play an important role serving our smartphone customers,” Nokia Executive VP Niklas Savander said in a statement. “They give us a unique ability to both provide customization and be more responsive to customer needs.”

The cuts will be phased in through the end of the year.

Nokia, of course, is in the midst of a major transformation, as it makes Windows Phone its primary operating system, shifting away from its homegrown Symbian OS.

The company previously announced other rounds of job cuts, including one related to the closure of a plant in Romania.

The company plans to close a facility in Romania and location services facilities in Malvern, Penn., and Bonn, Germany, with the job cuts coming by the end of this year. The reductions are in addition to the cuts Nokia announced earlier this year. Furthermore, the company said it is starting to reevaluate its staffing levels at a number of other facilities, with an eye toward cutting more jobs next year.

Nokia is in the process of shifting from a smartphone strategy focused around its aging Symbian platform to one based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. Its first Windows Phone devices are due out later this year.

“We are seeing solid progress against our strategy, and with these planned changes we will emerge as a more dynamic, nimble and efficient challenger,” CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement. “We must take painful, yet necessary, steps to align our workforce and operations with our path forward.”

Separately, Nokia said both it and Siemens are investing a further 500 million Euros into their Nokia Siemens telecom gear joint venture.

However, this morning I stumbled upon some videos on YouTube done by Free Press, a consumer group that opposes the proposed $39 billion AT&T-T-Mobile deal. The videos are parodies of T-Mobile’s recent ad campaign, which was itself a parody of Apple’s Mac vs. PC ads.

There are several of the videos. And while the attacks are familiar — warnings that the deal will lead to job cuts and higher prices — at least the medium is inventive.

For those who prefer lots of text over a quick chuckle, AT&T has also made a revised filing with the FCC arguing the benefits of the deal and Sprint has issued its response.

“AT&T’s ‘do-over’ submission is a last-ditch attempt to distract regulators, politicians and consumers from the fact that it has failed to provide any evidence that its proposed takeover of T-Mobile yields meaningful benefits,” Sprint Senior VP Vonya McCann said in a statement. “Its latest model, clearly constructed with predetermined results in mind, does nothing to change the negative consequences of the takeover for consumers in the form of higher prices, reduced innovation and decreased investment.”

As for me, I’d go with the videos.

Layoffs are indeed under way at Microsoft (MSFT). As expected, the cuts are relatively small–in the hundreds globally, according to TechFlash. That’s nowhere near the 5,800 job cuts that Microsoft made across the company in 2009.

Of the 600 financial sector workers surveyed on Wall Street and London’s Canary Wharf who lost or left a job last year, 41 percent admitted to taking confidential company data with them. Exactly half, 50 percent, said they would steal company information if they were fired tomorrow, and 39 percent said they would download it if they felt their job was at risk.

Nearly a third, 28 percent, would use the information to negotiate their next position. The most commonly stolen data: Customer contact lists that could be leveraged at a new job.

Cyber-Ark’s study isn’t the first to uncover such employee sentiments. A similar effort by the Ponemon Institute earlier this year found that close to 60 percent of people who left or lost their jobs in 2008 took company data with them. “I’m not sure that malicious intent and future employment are mutually exclusive,” Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, told eWeek at the time.

“Clearly the responses show that obtaining future employment was a significant motivating factor,” Ponemon added, “but when we see a high percentage of individuals who took information knowing full well they were acting in violation of company policy, that hints strongly at the presence of malice.”

Applied Materials (AMAT) could be next.

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