AT&T Bolsters T-Mobile Merger By Donating To Charities
As someone old enough to remember when AT&T was split up in the early 1980's, I find the business cycle interesting: Here we are again, only this time AT&T is merging with companies to get bigger.
Something else that is interesting is the two dozen charities that have written the FCC to campaign in favor of AT&T's proposed merger with T-Mobile. It seems that the telecommunications company has found a creative way to lobby the FCC.
As one example:
At first sight, it’s hard to understand why the Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter and clinic in Louisiana, would lobby the Federal Communications Commission.
“It is important that we, as Christians, never stop working on behalf of the underserved and forgotten,” the Rev. R. Henry Martin, director of the clinic, wrote to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in June. “It might seem like an out-of-place endorsement, but I am writing today in order to convey our support for the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.”
The back story includes AT&T's recent donation of $50,000.
Not included in Martin’s letter to the FCC was the fact that his organization had received a $50,000 donation from AT&T just five months earlier. Indeed the Shreveport-Bossier Mission is one of at least two-dozen charities that were recipients of AT&T’s largesse and have written in support of the T-Mobile buyout, which will cut the number of national wireless companies from four to three.
Charities supporting AT&T’s buyout of T-Mobile have financial incentive | iWatch News.