Cohen Testimony: AT&T/T-Mobile Merger Good for Consumers, Workers

U.S. Can 'Re-Establish Global Leadership in High-Speed Communications'

CWA President Larry Cohen, right, testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Wednesday in support of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger. The other witnesses, from far left, are AT&T CEO Randall Stevenson, T-Mobile CEO Philipp Humm, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse, Cellular South CEO Victor H. "Hu" Meena, and Gigi Sohn, president, Public Knowledge.

Emphasizing the accelerated growth of high-speed broadband and other benefits for consumers and workers, CWA President Larry Cohen testified Wednesday on Capitol Hill in support of the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile.

The merger "will create tremendous economic opportunity by accelerating the deployment of high-speed broadband across the country, it will increase jobs and economic development in rural America, and it will positively impact consumers and competition," Cohen told the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights.

All of which will help the United States "re-establish global leadership in high-speed communications," he said, noting AT&T's pledge to "deploy next-generation wireless service to over 97 percent of our nation's population within six years" if the merger is approved.

"This is noteworthy because today only 20 percent of U.S. broadband subscribers connect to the Internet at such speeds," Cohen said.

Expansion will create thousands of new jobs at AT&T, America's only unionized wireless company. As a result, T-Mobile workers who have been fighting for years to unionize will finally have the opportunity to bargain collectively for better wages, benefits and job security.

"Both the economic and workers' rights issues make AT&T a far better merger partner than their competitor, Sprint," Cohen said.

"AT&T has the financial resources to develop fully T-Mobile's assets," he said. "Sprint, with its BB minus non-investment grade bond rating, does not. AT&T and T-Mobile utilize similar and compatible technologies. Sprint does not.

Further, "Sprint is the only U.S. wireless company that outsources network management, and according to press reports, many of those jobs have been sent to India," Cohen said. "Sprint also outsourced up to 70 percent of its customer contact work to places like the Philippines, India, and Mexico. And lastly, Sprint has a long history of hostility to employees who want to join a union."

Making similar arguments in his testimony, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson stressed that the merger would enhance, not harm, the competitive wireless market.

"Wireless industry output is exploding and is on track to increase many times over by 2015," Stephenson said. "Output will continue to rise, prices will continue to fall, new companies will continue to enter, all of these competitors will continue to wage fierce marketing campaigns to attract and retain customers, and the U.S. wireless marketplace will remain the most competitive in the world."