AT&T’s attempt to avoid oversight and enforcement of consumer protection laws by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) failed in a federal appeals court Monday, overturning a 2016 decision that agreed with AT&T the FTC could not oversee or punish AT&T for its business practices.

In a unanimous 11-0 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the court found AT&T’s interpretation of a law it said gave the Federal Communications Commission exclusive authority to regulate and oversee “common carrier” telecom companies was overly broad and based on a misinterpretation of the law. The decision means the FTC will continue to pursue AT&T in court to secure relief for AT&T’s wireless customers that the FTC claims were misled by AT&T’s unlimited data plan that was not truly unlimited.

“The phrase ‘common carriers subject to the acts to regulate commerce’ thus provides immunity from FTC regulation only to the extent that a common carrier is engaging in common-carrier services,” the court ruled Monday. In laymen’s terms, the judges found that the FCC does have the regulatory authority to oversee common carrier services like basic telephone service, but the law does not prevent other government agencies like the FTC to oversee AT&T’s conduct in non common-carrier services.

The FTC and the FCC both argued that allowing AT&T and the 2016 lower court opinion to stand would create a regulatory loophole through which virtually any corporation with even the slightest ownership stake in a common carrier telecommunications company could escape all oversight and enforcement of consumer protection laws.

The dispute began in 2014, when the FTC sued AT&T in court for intentionally throttling wireless internet speeds of millions of AT&T customers hanging on to their legacy unlimited data plans.

The FTC’s complaint alleged that the company failed to adequately disclose to its customers on unlimited data plans that, if they reached a certain amount of data use in a given billing cycle, AT&T reduced – or “throttled” – their data speeds to the point that many common mobile phone applications – like web browsing, GPS navigation and watching streaming video –  become difficult or nearly impossible to use.

“AT&T promised its customers ‘unlimited’ data, and in many instances, it has failed to deliver on that promise,” said former FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez in 2014. “The issue here is simple: ‘unlimited’ means unlimited.”

According to the FTC’s complaint, AT&T’s marketing materials emphasized the “unlimited” amount of data that would be available to consumers who signed up for its unlimited plans. The complaint alleged that, even as unlimited plan consumers renewed their contracts, the company still failed to inform them of the throttling program. When customers canceled their contracts after being throttled, AT&T charged those customers early termination fees, which typically amount to hundreds of dollars.

The complaint accused AT&T of violating the FTC Act by changing the terms of customers’ unlimited data plans while those customers were still under contract, and by failing to adequately disclose the nature of the throttling program to consumers who renewed their unlimited data plans.

AT&T responded in court asking the case be dismissed, arguing that the FTC could not bring a case against AT&T because, as a common carrier, only the FCC has jurisdiction over the company.

The case was largely decided on whether Congress intended to exempt common carrier companies from FTC oversight based on their “status” or their “activities.” AT&T argued the law clearly gave companies deemed to be common carriers a blanket exemption from FTC oversight. The FTC argued Congress only intended to exempt the specific common carrier “activities” or services sold by a company from FTC oversight, not the entire company. The three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals agreed with AT&T’s view, affirming AT&T’s claim it was untouchable by the FTC and dismissed the FTC’s lawsuit.

Judge Kozinski, questioning AT&T: “I’m regulated by the FTC and I don’t like it. I go out and I buy a small, money-losing common carrier. Do I say, ‘bye bye FTC,’ under your reading of the statute?”

The decision was a stunner in D.C. regulatory circles and opened a chasm-sized loophole for almost any company to completely escape the FTC’s oversight and enforcement of consumer protection laws just by providing a single common carrier service (or acquiring a small phone company that does) to secure blanket immunity. The FTC appealed the decision before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Both the FTC and at least one judge hearing the federal agency’s appeal saw the potential impact of the earlier 2016 decision immediately.

“I’m regulated by the FTC and I don’t like it,” Judge Alex Kozinski said to AT&T’s attorney. “I go out and I buy a small, money-losing common carrier. Do I say, ‘bye bye FTC,’ under your reading of the statute?”

The FTC warned if AT&T’s view was upheld, any company could buy a common carrier and violate federal consumer protection laws with no recourse for consumers and no available FTC enforcement action.

This week’s decision, called “common sense” by the judge who wrote the summary of the court’s finding, restores the FTC’s authority over non-common carrier services at companies large and small, including AT&T. It is also a relief to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who earlier argued the FTC had jurisdiction over abusive ISPs and would effectively oversee broadband providers without any need to continue the net neutrality policies of his predecessor. Had the court ruled in favor of AT&T, Pai’s policy would have transferred oversight of internet services to an agency legally prohibited from overseeing most broadband providers.

The FTC was pleased with the decision.

“It ensures that the FTC can and will continue to play its vital role in safeguarding consumer interests including privacy protection, as well as stopping anti-competitive market behavior,” Maureen Ohlhausen, acting Chairwoman, said in an emailed statement.

AT&T was not, and claimed the court ignored the merits of the case.

“We are reviewing the opinion and continue to believe we ultimately will prevail,” the representative said in an emailed statement, which did not definitively state whether AT&T intended to appeal the decision.

At a hearing Wednesday to question President Donald Trump’s nominees for the Federal Trade Commission, Democrats expressed concern about some signals from the three Republican and one Democratic nominees that they intend to enforce consumer protection laws as long as there is evidence they have the indisputable authority to act.

What happens when corporate interests and special interest groups insist the FTC’s regulatory powers are uncertain, limited by precedent, blocked by court opinions, or contrary to the wishes of Congress remained uncertain after the hearing.

The Senate Commerce Committee is facing some urgency to approve the nominations to fill a large number of vacancies at the FTC, which currently prevents the agency from taking votes on actions. If all four nominees are approved, the FTC will still have a single open commissioner’s seat on the Democratic side.

The nominated FTC commissioners are:

Simons

Joseph J. Simons, nominated for chairman for the FTC, is a Republican antitrust lawyer who has taken a few trips through Washington’s revolving door, serving as chief of the FTC’s Competition Bureau, investigating mergers and anticompetitive conduct from 2001 to 2003 under President George W. Bush. During his tenure, the FTC mostly pursued high-profile cases that brought clear evidence of antitrust harm. Under Simons, the FTC blocked Libbey, Inc. from acquiring its chief glassware rival Anchor Hocking. Vlasic Foods International and Claussen Pickle found an unreceptive FTC for their merger, eventually also blocked. Simons was noted for investigating pharmaceutical companies that applied for misleading drug patents designed to delay the entry of cheaper generic versions of brand name pharmaceutical products. After his tenure at the FTC, Simons accepted a lucrative $1.9 million partnership at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, which handles corporate mergers and acquisitions for corporate clients.

Wilson

Christine S. Wilson, a Delta Air Lines executive, is also a frequent flyer through D.C.’s revolving door. During the George W. Bush administration, she was chief of staff for then-FTC chairman Tim Muris. She also held three other significant corporate-public policy positions that advised companies and the U.S. government about antitrust matters. In 2011, Wilson accepted a high paying partnership at Kirkland and Ellis, a firm well-regarded for helping corporations successfully complete antitrust reviews of their mergers and acquisitions. Wilson’s latest employer was Delta Air Lines, which offered her an executive position in August 2016 as the company’s senior vice president for legal, regulatory, and international affairs. In addition to the $521,000 in distributions Wilson earned from her partnership at Kirkland and Ellis, Wilson accepted an undisclosed cash signing bonus, $136,000 in bonuses in 2017 from a management incentive plan, and a regular salary of $390,000. Wilson retains various amounts of unvested Delta stock and stock options that would normally be lost after leaving the company, but Delta apparently wanted to part with Wilson on the friendliest of terms, granting her pro rata compensation for the stock and waiving the usual requirement that an employee leaving so quickly after being hired should pay back 50% of their signing bonus.

Phillips

Noah Joshua Phillips served as chief counsel for Republican Sen. John Cornyn at the Senate Judiciary Committee. Before coming to Capitol Hill, Phillips was an associate at Steptoe & Johnson LLP in Washington and at Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. He focused on civil litigation.

Consumer Federation of America senior fellow Rohit Chopra is a Democrat and the only nominee with a long record of representing consumer interests and pushing for increased consumer protection and better oversight of financial services and products targeting consumers. Chopra was previously assistant director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where he oversaw the agency’s agenda on students and young consumers. He specialized in targeting the student loan industry for abusive practices and secured hundreds of millions of dollars in relief for student loan borrowers.

Chopra

Because of the unprecedented number of vacancies at the Commission, President Trump’s nominees could have an enormous impact on the direction of the FTC over the next several years. Traditionally, three of the commissioners belong to the current president’s political party and two belong to the other party.

Observers suggest the nominees are not atypical for a Republican president to nominate and some have served at the FTC before. None have attracted the kind of controversy that followed Makan Delrahim, Trump’s pick for head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Most expect the Republican majority-led FTC will bend towards the interests of businesses unless there is clear and convincing evidence of significant consumer harm, especially in cases of mergers and acquisitions.

“Traditionally, Republican commissioners tend to be more lenient in merger enforcement on the marginal case, and we haven’t seen any evidence to indicate that [Simons] would depart from the traditional Republican posture,” said Mary Lehner, a partner with Freshfields and a former FTC attorney who also served as an adviser to two chairmen of the agency.

A major concern for some Democrats is that the FTC is now being tasked with protecting what remains of net neutrality, the open internet protocol that was swept away by the Republican majority at the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC reclassified internet service providers once again as “information services,” under Title 1 of the Communications Act. That transfers oversight back to the FTC — an agency not known for careful oversight of internet providers’ business practices.

At the hearing, Simons equivocated on how the FTC will deal with allegations of ISP abuse and signaled his concern that a Ninth Circuit court ruling found that telecommunications companies that also serve as common carriers (ie. telephone companies) are completely exempt from FTC authority.

Some Democrats interpreted Simons’ remarks as suggesting he could adopt a “my hands are tied” approach to ISP oversight, claiming that the FTC lacks the authority to keep an eye out for industry abuses.

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) seized on such comments, asking Simons to confirm if he believes the FTC specifically “lacks rulemaking authority” on net neutrality while the FCC, directly responsible for transferring net neutrality enforcement away from itself, “does have rulemaking authority to prevent blocking, throttling and paid prioritization by ISPs.”

Simons prevaricated in his answer, telling Markey, “We both have rulemaking, and they’re different types of rulemaking.”

Markey

“I’d want to talk to the general counsel’s office before I gave a specific answer to that, but I’m not entirely clear,” Simons said in response to a followup question pressing the issue.

“We are going to take the [statutory] authority we have and use it as best we can,” Simons told senators at the Senate Commerce Committee hearing. “I don’t know exactly what types of anti-competitive or deceptive and unfair practices may come up. If something comes up that we can’t reach under our statute, then I would certainly talk to you about a federal legislative fix.”

But observers note such a fix could take years, and the FTC often takes a year or more to complete investigations of alleged wrongdoing before starting to act.

Chopra, the lone Democratic nominee, agreed with Democrats that he also feared the FTC’s authority to act is uncertain, and that lack of certainty is likely to delay any enforcement actions. Chopra comments suggested the telecom industry is likely to use the Ninth Circuit court ruling to their advantage.

“I share a lot of the skepticism and concerns,” Chopra told the committee. “The FTC may face an unlevel playing field where some major market participants are exempt from the commission’s authority while others are subject to it.”

Blumenthal

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said that single Ninth Circuit court ruling could provide the telecom industry with a ready-made loophole to escape the FTC’s jurisdiction altogether. An ISP could acquire “a minor side business” like a small rural telephone company subject to common carrier rules and win blanket corporate immunity from FTC oversight. Although Simons said he would support striking the common carrier exemption from the Federal Trade Commission Act which defines the FTC’s authority, such a change could take several years to get through Congress and a well-funded telecom industry lobbying effort.

Phillips seemed impatient about the net neutrality debate which occupied a significant part of the hearing, characterizing it as a side issue worth sidestepping to focus on broader issues.

“We can’t allow contentious issues to distract us from the bread and butter of the agency […] looking out for children, veterans, the elderly and Americans generally,” Phillips said.

Aside from the net neutrality debate, the Republican nominees signaled their interest in the possibility of investigating large tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook for antitrust activities. Republicans have been especially critical of Google, and some conservatives believe Twitter and Facebook exhibit political bias against them. The president has also frequently attacked Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos. Bezos owns the Washington Post, one of the many news outlets Trump said has been unfair to him. Trump has also accused Amazon of stiffing the government on sales taxes.

“Oftentimes companies get big because they are successful with the consumer, they offer a good service at a low price,” Simons said. “And that’s a good thing, and we don’t want to interfere with that. On the other hand, companies that are already big and influential can sometimes use inappropriate means — anticompetitive means — to get big or to stay big. And if that’s the case then we should be vigorously enforcing the antitrust laws.”

Another issue the FTC nominees promised to prioritize: online security/data breaches which expose consumers’ private information.

O’Rielly

Republican FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly wants the FCC to prohibit states from attempting an end run around the current majority’s broad-based deregulation of ISPs, likening it to a war of socialist forces vs. free market capitalism.

Speaking at the American Legislative Exchange Council’s Spring Task Force Summit Annual Summit in Charlotte, N.C. on May 5, O’Rielly made it clear he intends to stop states from writing broadband privacy rules to replace those killed by the Republican majority in Congress and also wants to restrict states from enacting new rules impacting Voice over IP and broadband. O’Rielly told the audience he had already spoken to Chairman Ajit Pai about his ideas, potentially giving his agenda a majority vote on the Commission. Currently, the FCC has just three commissioners – Ajit Pai, Mike O’Rielly, and Democrat Mignon Clyburn.

In earlier remarks, Pai rejected allowing states to make their own decisions about broadband privacy policies.

“It is both impractical and very harmful for each state to enact differing and conflicting privacy burdens on broadband providers, many of which serve multiple states, if not the entire country,” said Pai. “If necessary, the FCC should be willing to issue the requisite decision to clarify the jurisdictional aspects of this issue.”

FCC action could potentially pre-empt any state laws from at least 10 states that have either passed ISP privacy laws or are planning to.

O’Rielly declared he intends to move broadband regulation away from the agenda favored by the Obama Administration’s FCC chairman Thomas Wheeler and return to hands-off policies allowing cable and phone companies to manage their businesses without government interference. O’Rielly told a cheering audience at the corporate-funded conference that under Chairman Pai’s watch, the FCC will return to “its previous approach to broadband that enabled staggering innovation, creativity, competition, disruption and consumer benefit.”

O’Rielly characterized groups fighting for consumer legislation banning zero rating/data caps, rate regulation, oversight, and consumer protection laws as part of a nefarious “progressive agenda to vanquish capitalism and economic liberty.” Like ALEC, O’Rielly claimed, the FCC has been unfairly attacked by progressive groups that call out both Chairman Pai’s agenda at the FCC and ALEC itself for ghostwritten legislation actually written by large corporate interests and passed for their welfare.

“Like ALEC, the new commission is facing its share of unwarranted and inappropriate criticism,” O’Rielly complained.

O’Rielly’s speech declared war on three hot issues broadband companies and consumers are concerned with: Net Neutrality, community-owned broadband networks, and state regulators seen as meddling with the free market.

• Net Neutrality: “All of the propaganda in the world cannot paper over the fact that these new burdens were not in response to actual marketplace events but hypothetical concerns dreamed up by radical activists.”
• Regulation of Voice over IP Phone Service in Minnesota to assure quality of service: “Such inappropriate jurisdictional overreaches by states should be nipped in the bud.”
• Municipal Broadband: “It would be easy, as some have done, to blindly support any means necessary to get more and faster broadband to people they represent.”

O’Rielly sought a tighter partnership with ALEC to stop consumer groups from enacting new laws that protect an open internet:

“The members of ALEC can serve an important role as the new Commission seeks to restore free market principles to broadband offerings. Many of you know all too well of the pressure on us to buckle and acquiesce to the whims of the misinformed screaming for Net Neutrality. You likely face it at your respective statehouses as you debate the various matters before you. The ‘progressive agenda’ being pushed in so many settings is really an effort to use government as a means to redistribute hard earned assets from one group of people to favored interests. Do not let your voices go unheard as Net Neutrality advocates slowly, but surely, seek to drag the U.S. economy toward socialism.”

On municipal broadband, O’Rielly stretched his premise into a comparison of communities that want to have the ability to build their own networks with past offers of discounted heating oil from former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, suggesting good deeds on the surface may lead to unintended consequences later on.

Byron is on ALEC’s Communications and Technology Task Force

O’Rielly has also been infuriated with Minnesota’s Public Utilities Commission, which has been sparring with Charter Communications over its cable “digital phone” service in the U.S. District Court in St. Paul.

In March 2013, Charter Fiberlink Companies transferred 100,000 Minnesota customers to “an affiliate, Charter Advanced Services Companies, which provided VoIP phone service that was not certified” by the PUC, the Commerce Department said.

Better known as Spectrum Voice, Charter’s VoIP service had failed to collect any fees to support the state’s Telecommunications Access Minnesota program, which provides equipment for hearing-impaired and blind consumers who use the Minnesota Relay Service. Charter also refused to credit low-income consumers who would otherwise qualify for Lifeline phone service at discounted rates.

If the court determined VoIP was a “telecommunications service,” Minnesota regulators could force Charter to comply with state law. If determined to be an “information service,” federal rules exempting Charter would apply.

The week after O’Rielly delivered his speech a Minnesota federal charge ruled in favor of Charter and against the state regulator.

U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson relied on arcane terminology that lets Charter avoid state regulation:

“The court agrees with Charter Advanced that Spectrum Voice engages in net protocol conversion, and that this feature renders it an ‘information service’ under applicable legal and administrative precedent,” according to the opinion. Although Judge Nelson agreed that “the frank purpose” behind Charter’s customer shuffling was to “limit the reach of state regulation, thereby enhancing Charter’s market competitiveness,” she said the service fit the qualifications of an information service.

“The touchstone of the information services inquiry is whether Spectrum Voice acts on the customer’s information — here a phone call — in such a way as to ‘transform’ that information,” the opinion said.

Regardless of the judge’s decision, O’Rielly wants to prevent a recurrence of state regulator interference in the cable industry’s phone business.

“The commission should have just declared VoIP to be an interstate information service,” O’Rielly told the audience. “Arguably, VoIP is just an application not even subject to FCC jurisdiction much less that of individual states.”

Kinzinger

Republican-sponsored H.R. 2666 — the “No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act” — is drawing opposition from House Democrats because the measure, if it becomes law, could grant cable and telephone companies broad permanent exemption from oversight and consumer protection laws.

The bill, introduced last summer by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), consists of a single sentence:

Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the Federal Communications Commission may not regulate the rates charged for broadband Internet access service (as defined in the rules adopted in the Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order that was adopted by the Commission on February 26, 2015 (FCC 15–24)).

Eshoo

Democrats worry despite the brevity of the bill, its language is broad and sweeping, and could be interpreted by the courts to grant deregulation and freedom from oversight to telecommunications providers that already rank at the bottom of customer satisfaction scores. It would also undercut the FCC’s reclassification of broadband from an information service to a telecommunications service, subject to Title II regulations, which gave the FCC increased authority to oversee the broadband industry.

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) has signaled her likely opposition to the Republican bill, noting the proposed law could “eviscerate the FCC’s authority to protect consumers against truth in billing practices and discriminatory data caps; to ensure broadband availability through [the Universal Service Fund] and E-Rate; to address rate-related issues in merger reviews; to ensure enforcement against paid prioritization; and other essential consumer protections.”

Several Democrats on the House Communications Subcommittee are introducing amendments that would likely keep Republican language prohibiting the FCC from directly regulating broadband prices, but also protect the power of the FCC to regulate billing practices, data caps and usage pricing, Net Neutrality, universal service requirements, merger reviews, and discriminatory and/or unfair business practices.

The Democrats are likely to have an uphill battle in a Republican-controlled House. Constituents may have more influence expressing their opposition to H.R. 2666 by reaching out to Rep. Kinzinger and the 18 Republican co-sponsors of the measure:

• Rep. Latta, Robert E. [R-Ohio]
• Rep. Bilirakis, Gus M. [R-Fla.]
• Rep. Barton, Joe [R-Tex.]
• Rep. Lance, Leonard [R-N.J.]
• Rep. Shimkus, John [R-Ill.]
• Rep. Blackburn, Marsha [R-Tenn.]
• Rep. Olson, Pete [R-Tex.]
• Rep. Pompeo, Mike [R-Kan.]
• Rep. Scalise, Steve [R-La.]
• Rep. Cramer, Kevin [R-N.D.]
• Rep. Collins, Chris [R-N.Y.]
• Rep. Long, Billy [R-Mo.]
• Rep. Guthrie, Brett [R-Ky.]
• Rep. Johnson, Bill [R-Ohio]
• Rep. Ellmers, Renee L. [R-N.C.]
• Rep. Walden, Greg [R-Ore.]
• Rep. Upton, Fred [R-Mich.]
• Rep. Allen, Rick W. [R-Ga.]

In Search Of… AT&T U-verse with GigaPower

AT&T’s gigabit broadband project has appeared in the greater Nashville area, but Stop the Cap! volunteers in the country music capital report you have a better chance getting struck by lightning than finding the service available to your home or business.

AT&T officially unveiled the upgrade in “parts of Clarksville, Lebanon, Murfreesboro, Nashville, Smyrna and surrounding communities located throughout the metro area,” but quickly warned with three asterisks the service was “not available in all areas.”

“That is the understatement of the year,” said Nashville resident Chris Jensen who can’t wait to ditch Comcast for 15 years of bad service and billing errors. “Unless you live in an upscale apartment complex, a new housing development, Walmart or have a country album on the charts you are probably going to be stuck with traditional U-verse speeds from AT&T.”

Jensen is part of Stop the Cap!’s In Search Of… AT&T GigaPower, our new project using volunteers to pelt AT&T’s qualification tool with addresses (and follow-up phone calls) looking for AT&T’s elusive gigabit speeds in the cities where the service has been introduced.

“Forget it Nashville, it’s another AT&T fiber to the press release and payback to the very friendly state politicians that rubber stamp AT&T’s agenda,” said Jensen.

Despite GigaPower’s rarity, AT&T is the first company to bring gigabit speeds to the Nashville residential market.

AT&T Tennessee president Joelle Phillips is surrounded by AT&T’s political friends from around the state. (Photo: The Tennessean)

Joelle Phillips, president of AT&T Tennessee, used a news release to share the company’s spotlight with a number of local and state politicians identified as supporters of AT&T’s public policy advocacy effort, which includes deregulating AT&T’s business in the state and attempting to keep restrictions on the books to block competing public broadband network expansion in Tennessee.

“We were able to deploy network enhancements fast – in less than a year since we announced our U-verse with AT&T GigaPower plans for Nashville,” said Phillips. “Smart, pro-investment policies, championed at the state level by Governor Haslam and legislative leaders like Speaker Harwell and Lt. Governor Ramsey – as well as streamlined local permitting processes that Mayor Dean and our Metro Council members have embraced – were key in speeding our work.”

Nonsense, says Jensen.

“Tennessee is about as friendly a state AT&T can find — our legislature allows AT&T to basically write its own pieces of legislation, yet the fastest way to get gigabit speeds is to move to Chattanooga where EPB is providing the service without asking to gut consumer protection laws or wait for AT&T to get around to bringing faster service to your home,” said Jensen.

Critics contend AT&T maintains ties with state and local politicians that are too close for comfort, potentially hurting consumers in Tennessee.

According to the National Institute of Money in Politics, telecommunications industry interests wrote at least $643,000 in campaign contribution checks to Tennessee politicians during the two-year 2014 election cycle. AT&T alone put $211,000 into the pockets of legislators. The Tennessee Registry of Election Finance reports AT&T contributed $20,000 during the last election cycle to Republican Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey’s leadership political action committee, RAAMPAC. AT&T President Joelle Phillips personally gave another $2,000.

House Speaker Beth Harwell benefited from at least $17,000 in AT&T money over the last two years. AT&T spends another $1.3 million on as many as 13 full time lobbyists that devote all of their attention to Tennessee.

Gov. Bill Haslam doesn’t really need AT&T’s money. He is now worth an estimated $2 billion, making him the richest elected official in the country, according to an analysis by Forbes.

In return for this largesse, AT&T is routinely praised by all three state officials, which is returned when AT&T sends out press releases gushing over Tennessee’s ‘AT&T-Friendly’ deregulation policies.

AT&T will charge a range of prices for U-verse GigaPower service in Nashville, which all include AT&T’s right-to-spy on your browsing behavior. If you want to opt out of AT&T’s “Internet Preferences” customer monitoring program, add $29 a month to these prices:

• U-verse High Speed Internet Premier: Internet speeds up to 1Gbps starting at $120 a month, or speeds at 100Mbps as low as $90 a month, with one-year contract required;
• U-verse High Speed Internet Premier + TV: Internet speeds up to 1Gbps and qualifying TV service starting at $150 a month, or speeds at 100Mbps and qualifying TV service as low as $120 a month, with a one year contract;
• U-verse High Speed Internet Premier + TV + Voice: Internet speeds up to 1Gbps with qualifying TV service and Unlimited U-verse Voice starting at $180 a month, or speeds at 100Mbps with qualifying TV service and Unlimited U-verse Voice as low as $150 a month, with a two-year term commitment.

AT&T imposes a 1TB monthly usage cap on its gigabit broadband service. Overlimit fees of $10 per 50GB will apply to customers exceeding that usage allowance.