Telecom Lobbying Stable in Q4, With Much on Deck for 2015

AT&T spent less than it did in the year-ago quarter, $3.06 million compared with $3.6 million. Verizon spending also fell almost $500,000 to $2.97 million. T-Mobile spent $1.3 million, a drop from $1.4 million. Sprint upped spending to $772,658 from $716,887. USTelecom spending was down to $1.75 million from $1.87 million.

Comcast spent $5.03 million, hundreds of thousands more than the $4.78 million over the same period in 2013. NCTA shelled out $5.5 million, one of the higher levels but a decline of just over $1 million. Time Warner Cable had $2.2 million in spending, down from $2.49 million. NAB continued a trend of escalating lobbying spending, however, to $4.53 million from $3.8 million.

Consumer Watchdog tracked telecom and media spending throughout all four quarters of 2014 and noted that AT&T, Comcast, TWC and Verizon spent less. “Even with the cuts, it’s a lot of money,” Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson told us.

Center Stage

Several telecom issues enjoyed the national stage this past year, with the White House actively involved on such issues as net neutrality, municipal broadband deployment and ConnectED, involving E-rate revamp. Two proposed acquisitions are also still pending before federal regulators -- Comcast’s purchase of TWC and AT&T's of DirecTV.

Plenty of Q4 lobbying forms included references to net neutrality, a recurring theme over the past year as lawmakers and commissioners have debated the best way to write new rules ahead of an FCC vote now expected for Feb. 26. Several forms mention Title II, such as the Empire Consulting Group’s, lobbying on behalf of Verizon. The Internet Association lobbied on “the Open Internet Roadmap,” it said.

WTA “met with policymakers” to express its “view that blocking and ‘throttling’ of traffic is not it its members' best interest as local small telecommunications providers,” said its Q4 report of $80,000. “WTA did however, express support to ensure sections 251, 252 and 254 of the Communications Act remain in place should broadband be reclassified as a Title II service with FCC forbearance from certain portions of Title II.” Comptel focused its lobbying on Title II provisions dealing with last mile and interconnection, spending time on section 251 and 252 interconnection obligations, it said.

“2015 is shaping up as a big year for telecom lobbying," Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant said. “Net neutrality is a major new driver. And [the] House has already laid the foundation to perhaps get into media and other areas. And that's all on top of carryover Hill work related to the pending mergers and other agency work."

Lobbying on Telecom Rewrite, Municipal Broadband

Major policy items mentioned in the reports include the proposed Communications Act overhaul, which is still a broad policy ambition far from legislative stages, and reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act. Congress reauthorized STELA for another five years in December, ending what had been more than a year of fierce lobbying from broadcasters, pay-TV companies and others. Retransmission consent overhaul dominated as the focus throughout 2014.

Comptel’s spending spiked to $409,577, from $172,609 in Q4 2013. Comptel Senior Vice President-Government Relations Alan Hill explained the spike as being the result of bringing on “additional outside consultants” to handle the Communications Act rewrite efforts. Comptel helped organize a high-profile event on Capitol Hill this summer spotlighting the virtues of the 1996 Telecom Act (see 1406190045).

Other hot-button issues cited in lobbying disclosure forms include municipal broadband, all the more in the spotlight this month as President Barack Obama weighed in to pressure the FCC to pre-empt restrictive state laws. USTelecom and Cox Enterprises lobbied on the issue, they said, as did Yahoo, through consulting firm Kountoupes Denham. The American Public Power Association, spending $152,493 in Q4, deployed two lobbyists in its support of municipal broadband deployment and “educated House Telecommunications Subcommittee on these issues as they begin to rewrite the Telecommunications Act of 1996,” its form said.

Municipal broadband has received “renewed attention” in the past year since the debates kicked up about Telecom Act Section 706 and the FCC’s considering state law pre-emption, Desmarie Waterhouse, a lobbyist for the American Public Power Association, told us. Her association, which represents electric utilities that sometimes offer broadband, hasn’t weighed in on the FCC pre-emption but does back Congress moving forward with pre-empting restrictive state laws, she said. “A lot of it’s really educational,” she said of her Hill meetings, “pushing back on a lot of the statements” suggesting municipal broadband projects are doomed to failure. She expects municipal broadband will stay a lobbying focus throughout 2015 as Congress mulls a rewrite of the Communications Act.

Many stakeholders, from Amazon to Cisco to the American Association of School Administrators, named E-rate as a lobbying priority. The NAACP, spending just shy of $69,000, lobbied in favor of ConnectED and E-rate but opposed “cannibalizing other low-income telecommunications subsidies under the Universal Service Fund to pay for E-Rate and ConnectEd,” it said. WTA lobbied in “support of modernizing the current E-Rate program because the current bidding process is heavily skewed toward consortiums and in some instances prevents RLECs from being able to participate in the bidding process to provide broadband/Internet access services to schools and libraries at discounted rates,” it said. “WTA also advocated that the definition designating a 'rural' and 'urban' area be changed to something more appropriate and that truly reflected a rural area.”

Lobbying cash didn't flow as freely for other companies and associations, despite remaining at relatively stable and often high levels. CenturyLink spent $1.47 million, slightly down from $1.49 million. NTCA spent $120,000 in Q4 compared with $150,000 the year before. DirecTV spent $650,000, a $100,000 gain. Dish spending showed no great change at $350,000. The Internet Association spent $360,000 -- less than the $400,000 the previous year. CEA also spent less, down to $780,000 from $940,000.