How the AT&T/Time Warner Deal Could Hurt Low-Income Families

[Commentary] AT&T executives think their plan to take over Time Warner is too big to fail. But the proposed merger’s astronomical cost may prove them wrong. For the deal to go through, AT&T and Time Warner need the approval of government regulators, especially those at the Department of Justice, who will vet it to see if it violates antitrust laws. But there’s another metric by which regulators should evaluate the merger: its impact on real people, especially low-income households and communities of color.

AT&T will need to regularly pay interest to service its massive debt. The telecommunications giant doesn’t print cash; it bills customers. In other words, to pay down its interest, AT&T will have to hike prices. Higher prices would put Internet access further out of reach of the more than 30 million adults in this country stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide. According to US Census data, this gap is most pronounced in African-American and Hispanic communities. People already suffering from generations of systemic racism are disadvantaged further by lack of access to the educational and work opportunities that are at the fingertips of those with high-speed connections. For the enormous amount of money AT&T is shelling out to acquire Time Warner, it could run super-fast gigabit-fiber Internet services to every single home in America. There’s no doubt that this mega-merger doesn’t benefit ordinary Americans. People want reliable, cheap and fast connections to the open Internet. We also need a choice of providers, not a few bloated companies controlling access to both the Internet and the content that flows across it. The merger of AT&T and Time Warner is just too big and costly to accomplish that. For that reason, it must be blocked.

[Tim Karr is the senior director of strategy for Free Press]