AT&T and Verizon Ramped Up Their Lobbying Efforts in Q1
With the new spending increases for AT&T their spending raised a total of 15%. This comes as both Verizon and AT&T are opening up the floodgates and letting the money flow for the lobbying efforts in the first quarter.
The companies are really working to push their efforts for their positions on the possibility of net neutrality legislation as well as the national broadband initiative as well as a whole host of other consumer related issues including those of exclusive handset deals and early termination fees among others.
In the first quarter the spending from AT&T came in at $5.93 million to lobby the federal regulators and the lawmakers. This is a 15% increase from the first quarter of last year. Verizon Communications spent a little less but not by much coming in at a first quarter total of $4.72 million. This is up a significant amount more though of 26% from the same quarter of last year. The amounts for Verizon Wireless aren’t known at this time.
Comcast ended up spending right around $3 million in order to make their case against net neutrality rules. The money that they spent was also used to promote the proposed merger between their company and NBC Universal to the lawmakers as well as the regulators that are reviewing the deal. Their spending was down from Q4 2099 when the figure was a tad shy of $3.5 million but it was up significantly from the $2.76 million from the year prior.
The spending that came from Verizon and AT&T far outpaced the spending from any of the other more known technology companies, even Google, who spent around $1.38 million of their own during the same quarter. Microsoft had spent $1.72 million during Q1 and Facebook just $41,000.
Needless to say the quarter for Verizon and AT&T were definitely busy ones. Judging on things other than just the money they lobbied on right about 50 issues relating to telecommunications.
Some of the specifics were their positions with the lawmakers and regulators on both rules and proposed bills that deal with net neutrality. Both of the companies oppose this. Through the first quarter the FCC released information on their national broadband plan and it contained more than 60 policy proposals. The proposals were opposed for the most part with one of those being the line sharing for small businesses but they did push for more federal involvement in the allocation for mobile broadband.
Needless to say it’s likely that the giants will continue to make more and more pushes to further their lobbying efforts throughout the Q2, Q3 and Q4 of the year. As the FCC deals with a lot of questions over the reclassification of broadband services expect these pushes to be hard.
Related posts:
- As FCC Vote Looms the Net Neutrality War Heating Up
- Verizon Suing the FCC over Rules on Net Neutrality
- New FCC Commissioners Named By Obama
- Net Neutrality Update: FCC Votes On A Half-Measure
- The Expected Consumer Effects of the FCC’s New National Broadband Plan
- Net Neutrality Could Take a Hit after Midterm Elections
- Senator Hutchison Moves toward Blocking FCC Funds on Net Neutrality Rules
- Verizon to Pay $25 Million for Their Spurious Fees
- Verizon Wireless to Add Skype to Smartphone’s
- Verizon Again Fined For Dirty Billing Practices
Tags: AT&T, Cell Phones, Verizon, Verizon Wireless