Unmasking FCC's Revolving Door with Telecom Giants

From conflicts of interest to corporate lobbying, decades of bipartisan betrayal at the FCC have undermined the public trust and favored Telecom titans.

Updated September 19th, 2024 with new entries for Kevin J. Martin, Deborah Taylor Tate, Kathleen Q. Abernathy, and Michael Powell.

House Democrats recently called for an investigation into Brendan Carr, a current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member who was first appointed by former President Trump in 2017. Carr drew Democrats’ scrutiny after he authored a section in Project 2025 on the FCC which advocates for repealing Section 230, among other policies. Carr’s ideas for telecommunications regulation appear to be in line with Trump and his conservative allies’ (as well as the telecom industry) longtime goals.

While House Democrats were rightly outraged, Carr’s background reveals his pro-industry alignment is hardly surprising. Before joining the FCC, Carr worked for Wiley Rein, a BigLaw firm whose telecoms clients include Viacom, AOL Time Warner, and all four of the regional Bell telephone companies. Founded by former FCC chairman Richard E. Wiley, the law firm specializes in hiring former and future FCC commissioners to defend telecom companies in regulatory lawsuits. Recently, Wiley helped their client Nexstar Broadcasting “persuade” the Supreme Court to affirm a previous FCC decision to repeal the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule and the radio/television cross-ownership rule. 

The revolver problem in the FCC, however, goes far beyond just Carr and Wiley Rein. Regulators from both sides of the aisle have gone on to betray the public interest by pursuing industry careers where they help massive communications companies dodge laws these former officials once enforced. In our analysis of the past seven commissioners who left the FCC (stretching back to the early 2000’s), the Revolving Door Project found these officials went on to take board seats and high-level corporate advising spots in the telecom industry. They have even outright lobbied for telecom industry associations or law firms that represent the industry.

Ajit Pai, FCC Commissioner from 2012 to 2016, Chairman from 2017 to 2021: With Ajit Pai at the helm of the agency, net neutrality was infamously repealed. Ajit Pai also approved the T-Mobile and Sprint Merger, as well as the Nexstar Media Group/Tribune Media merger.

• 2001 – 2003 Associate General Counsel, Verizon
  • Pai drafted and submitted comments to the FCC regarding proposed rulemaking and prepared testimony for congressional hearings. He also handled a variety of other litigation matters, such as submitting amicus briefs in cases related to Verizon’s interests and arguing dispositive motions.

• 2011 – 2012, Partner, Jenner & Block:
  • At Jenner & Block, Ajit Pai represented Securus, a prison phone company. When working for the FCC, Pai had the agency drop rules which limited the intrastate phone rates charged to prisoners. This FCC decision helped Securus and other phone companies exploit prisoners by charging them exorbitant fees to talk to their families. 

• 2021 – Present, Partner, Searchlight Capital Partners:
  • Searchlight Capital Partners is an investment firm that specializes in investing in the telecom industry. The firm is invested in Univision, as well as Mitel, a telecom service provider. Pai has helped them invest in the technology, media, and telecommunications sectors, being “…involved in sourcing and evaluating potential transactions; working with executives in portfolio companies…working with current and prospective limited partners regarding existing and future funds; and extending the firm’s reach through various public and private efforts.”

Tom Wheeler, FCC Chairman from 2013 to 2017: Wheeler approved Charter buying Time Warner Cable and Bright House Net and the AT&T-DirecTV merger. He was also part of the approval of Frontier acquiring many of Verizon’s local wireline, broadband, and video operations in California, Florida, and Texas.

• 2024 – Present, Board of Advisors, Truepic:
  • Truepic is an internet communications company with big investors at Adobe, Microsoft’s venture capital fund, Sony, and others. Wheeler was hired to “…advise Truepic’s ongoing efforts to advance secure content transparency and establish a more authentic internet.”

• 2017 – Present, CEO of The Shiloh Group LLC: 
  • This law firm is a “strategy and investment consulting firm”. It is specifically geared towards helping companies in the telecommunications sector.

• 1992 – 2004: President and CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA):
  • The CTIA is the telecom industry’s main trade association, spending over $17 million annually in federal lobbying.,  

• 1976 – 1984: National Cable Television Association (NCTA), President and CEO: 
  • Now known as the Internet & Television Association, the NCTA is a major trade group that represents companies like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and gave congressional candidates more than $1.7 million in 2016. 

Mignon Clyburn, FCC Commissioner from May 2013 to November 2013: The daughter of Democratic Congressman James Clyburn, Mignon Clyburn has a mixed record on telecom regulation. She supported several positive FCC decisions, such as net neutrality, supporting the lifeline program to make broadband access more affordable for lower-income families, and capping the rates that inmates have when making phone calls to their families. However, she also approved of the NBCUniversal/Comcast merger, the AT&T/DirecTV merger, as well as the Charter acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Net. Clyburn also supported spectrum auctions, a system that distributes the right to spectrum use by auctioning it off to telecom companies. Spectrum auctions have been criticized as often becoming an industry-friendly method of distributing spectrum use because, without the proper safeguards, it has often become a way that large communication companies engage in price collusion. 

• 2020 – Present: RingCentral Board of Directors:
  • RingCentral is a provider of cloud-based communications. It is partnered and works with over 400,000 Telecom companies, including AT&T, MGM, Spectrum, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Telus, and many more in its list of partners. 

• 2019 – Present: Principal, MLC Strategies
  • MLC Strategies is Clyburn’s eponymous consulting firm which provides “… strategic advice and critical solutions in the technology, media, telecommunications and investor-owned utility industries.”

Robert M. McDowell, FCC Commissioner from 2006 to 2013: McDowell opposed net neutrality as a staunch opponent of the Open Internet Order. He approved of the NBCUniversal/Comcast merger and also supported spectrum auctions.

• 2016 – Present: Partner, Cooley LLP:
  • This law firm has been called the “Tech Firm of the Year” by Law360. Cooley focuses on representing wireless, broadband, and cloud communications companies in commercial transactions and other business dealings. They have represented the telecommunications industry in contesting various regulations, and pride themselves on “some of the first successful petitions to revoke rural exemptions from the competition requirements of the Telecommunications Act of 1996”. The firm also touts being “actively involved in all varieties of Federal Communications Commission rulemaking proceedings and other policy initiatives important to the sector.”

• 2014 – 2016: Partner at Wiley Rein LLP:
  • Dubbed the “Telecom group of the year” by Law360. The law firm represented iHeartMedia Inc. and won several regulatory approvals for them. Wiley Reid’s Telecom Team has won a number of pro-industry lawsuits, listing numerous acquisitions and acquiring FCC approval for hundreds of millions of dollars of acquisitions and sales. Several other FCC commissioners have revolved into this law firm, such as Brendan Carr. 

• 2014 – 2016: Senior Advisor at Berenson and Company:
  • Berenson and Company is an investment firm, which focuses on a”… comprehensive suite of mergers & acquisitions advisory services, public and private financings of debt and equity, and financial restructuring and recapitalizations.” Keith Cowan, a senior telecom industry executive who worked on the board of Sprint and Bellsouth corporation, was hired for the senior advisor role in 2013, before McDowell. In other words, McDowell closely rubbed shoulders with the very people he should have been scrutinizing.

Meredith Attwell Baker, FCC Commissioner from 2009 to 2011: Baker made a number of industry-friendly decisions as an FCC regulator. She supported spectrum auctions and opposed net neutrality. She was the deciding vote in approving the NBCUniversal and Comcast merger. She has denied that she was in contact with Comcast while deliberating on this case as part of the FCC, but she abruptly left her term as commissioner just after the merger was approved to become the senior vice president at the resulting behemoth of a corporate entity.

• 2014 – Present: President and CEO of CTIA – the Wireless Association: 
  • The CTIA is the telecom industry’s main trade association, spending over $17 million annually in federal lobbying. Baker helps them advocate for spectrum auctions, deregulation in regards to infrastructure deployment, as well as opposing net neutrality. Baker and the CTIA have been listed as some of the top lobbyists on the hill.

• 2011 – 2014 Senior VP Of NBCUniversal Media:
  • After approving of the NBCUniversal/Comcast merger, Baker left her term as Commissioner of the FCC early to become Vice President of NBCUniversal Media. In this role, Baker lobbied on 21 bills on behalf of Comcast, just two years after leaving her post as a regulator. 

Julius Genachowski, FCC Chairman from 2009 to 2013: While Genachowski supported some modest moves toward net neutrality as Chairman, he also approved the NBCUniversal/Comcast merger, a decision that makes sense given his board positions on some of the most prominent telecom companies after leaving the FCC. 

• 2024 – Present Senior Advisor to the Carlyle Group
  • 2014 – 2024: Managing Director & Partner
  • The Carlyle Group is one of the biggest private equity firms and is known for its deep associations with the federal government. Private equity firms increase the process of corporate concentration by helping large corporations make acquisitions while gutting the companies that are bought, often undermining labor rights. Specifically appointed to the U.S. Buyout team, Genachowski helps the investment firm invest in media and telecom, as well as other investments in global technology, internet, and mobile technologies.
• 2023 – Present: Chair of the Board of Directors, Sonos, Inc
  • 2013 – Present: Member Board of Directors
• 2015 – 2020 Board of Directors, Sprint
  • When Genachowski was chairman of the FCC, Sprint put out a statement thanking him for one of his decisions. Considering he would later join their board, this action highlights his pro-corporate positioning as a regulator.
• 2014 – Present: Board of Directors, Mastercard

Jonathan S. Adelstein, FCC commissioner from 2002 to 2009: Adelstein left the FCC to work for a number of telecommunications companies and lobbying associations.

• 2024 – Present: Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy and External Affairs Office at TWN Communication
  • For TWN, an internet service provider, Adelstein is in charge of raising capital and grants that the company is using to build new broadband networks in rural America. He has seemingly leveraged his experience and social capital from working as a regulator to help the company receive federal funding. TWN lists some of his key responsibilities as assisting “TWN to capitalize on its prime position to grow the company’s infrastructure under the $42 billion federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program.”

• 2022 – 2024: Managing Director and Head of Global Policy and Public Investment, DigitalBridge 
  • DigitalBridge is an investment firm that invests in “…data centers, cell towers, fiber networks, small cells, and edge infrastructure.”. The company manages more than $80 billion on behalf of telecoms partners such as Boingo, Extenet, and many other data centers and telecommunications infrastructure companies. For the firm, Adelstein helps the company manage risks, evaluate investment opportunities, and represent its interests before policymakers. 

• 2012 – 2022: President and CEO Of the Wireless Infrastructure Association 

The WIA is a lobbying organization that counts AT&T, Bell, Dish, T-Mobile, Qualcomm, and many more telecom companies among its members. As the president and CEO of the company, Adelstein led the company in advocating for spectrum auctions. The WIA has also advocated for deregulation in regards to building more wireless towers.

Kevin J. Martin, FCC Commissioner from 2001 – 2009, FCC Chairman from 2005 – 2009: Martin’s time at the FCC was notably marked by a House investigation into him that yielded a scathing 110-page report detailing his repeated abuses of power. Among other findings, Martin deliberately misinformed other FCC commissioners and Congress while also consciously turning a blind eye to evidence that showed that national communications programs were being mismanaged. 

• 2015 – Present: Meta Platforms, Inc (Facebook)
  • Martin was the interim head, and later became the Vice President of US public policy. His hire was backdropped by the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which it was revealed that the Trump campaign illegally used tens of millions of people’s data to build voter profiles.

• 2009 – 2015: Patton Boggs, Co-Chair of Telecom Policy Group
  • Patton Boggs, a law and lobbying firm, accepted more than $200 million between 2009 and 2013 from large corporations in exchange for lobbying services. In 2014, it merged with another law firm to become Squire Patton Boggs, and it accepted another $56,530,000 in exchange for lobbying in 2014 and 2015.
  • Among its many corporate clients are many large Telecom companies and lobbying associations. AT&T, Verizon, The Wireless Infrastructure Association, the US Telecom Association, and Cablevision have given more than $1 million to the law firm between 2009 and 2015.

• 1998 – 2001: Wiley Rein, Partner
  • Wiley Rein is one of the main law firms for FCC revolvers and was even founded by former FCC chairman Richard E. Wiley. Predictably, it is also one of the main law firms for telecom companies. It represented big telecom companies such as Viacom, AOL Time Warner, and all four of the regional Bell telephone companies. Wiley Rein primarily helps these larger companies with huge mergers and acquisitions. It directly represents telecom companies in lawsuits with the FCC, and lobbies the government to relax regulatory rules that can in turn make it easier for Telecom executives to accelerate their accumulation of monopoly capital. 

Deborah Taylor Tate, FCC Commissioner from 2006 – 2009: Deborah Tate’s comparatively short time at the FCC was most notably marked by her support for loosening ownership rules as well as for approving the AT&T – Bellsouth Merger while also advocating for little conditions for the merger.

• 2006 – Present: Free State Foundation. Senior Fellow 2006 – 2009, Distinguished Senior Adjunct Fellow 2009 – Present

• The Free State Foundation is a neoliberal think tank that seeks to advocate for free market policies, with a particular focus on affecting Telecommunications policy: “FSF focuses on eliminating unnecessary and counterproductive regulatory mandates, especially those applicable to the communications and other high-tech industries, and on reducing overly burdensome taxes, protecting individual and economic liberty, including property rights, and making government more effective, efficient, and accountable”

• Writing for FSF, Tate has explicitly rejected net neutrality, rejected broadband taxation, has consistently written articles advocating for regulatory rollbacks, and explicitly centered public policy as just another way to advance business interests.  

Kathleen Q. Abernathy, FCC Commissioner 2001 – 2005: While at the FCC, Abernathy supported pulling back media ownership rules to allow for larger mergers between telecom companies and promoted broadband deregulation. Her misguided faith in market forces to lead to broadband development in rural areas has contributed to the uneven development of internet access.

• 2019 – Present: Somos, Inc., Member Board of Directors
  • Somos provides various database services for telecommunications companies. In 2019, with Abernathy on its board, the company was granted a contract from the FCC to become the exclusive provider of key services used by Telecommunications companies in the U.S. The contract allows them to “to serve as the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) and Pooling Administrator (PA) including the Routing Number Administrator (RNA)”. 

• 2019 – Present: DISH Network, Member Board of Directors
  • Abernathy is specifically on the Executive Compensation and Audit committees for Dish Network. While on the Board, the FCC approved a merger that saw Dish become a subsidiary of parent company EchoStar.

• 2020 – Present: BAI Communications, Member Board of Directors
  • BAI Communications is an Australian broadcast network. It provides television and radio services to 99% of the Australian population. BAI is so large that it also operates in the “North Hemisphere” as Boldyn Networks. For BAI, Abernathy helps secure investments into its expanding 5G sector. 

• 2006 – 2017: Frontier Communication, (2006 – 2010) Board of Directors, (2010 – 2017) Chief Legal Officer and Executive Vice President
  • Abernathy helped Frontier through “..three major strategic acquisitions that eventually grew Frontier to a Fortune 250 company”. In other words, she leveraged her experience and connections as a regulator to secure both state and federal-level approvals for the mergers. 

Michael Powell, FCC Commissioner 1997 – 2001, Chairman 2001 – 2005: Powell is notable for his wide-ranging and enthusiastic support for deregulating the FCC in the late 1990s. He also supported pulling back media ownership rules. Importantly, he argued that cable companies should be exempt from telephone regulations by classifying them as “information services”. This decision was subsequently overturned in the Ninth Circuit court. The FCC then appealed the case, bringing it to the Supreme court, where the court then reinstated Powell’s deregulatory decision. The NCTA, the main telecom lobbying group, joined the lawsuit on the side of the Powell-led FCC. Powell would later go on to lead this lobbyist organization after his time as chairman.

• 2011 – Present: President & CEO of the NCTA
  • The National Cable Television Association (NCTA), now known as the Internet & Television Association, is one of the largest Telecommunications lobbying associations. It counts some of the largest Telecom and cable companies as its members, such as Comcast, Charter, and C-Span. 
  • With Powell at the head, the NCTA opposes net neutrality. It opposed the FCC’s decision to raise the minimum internet speed for rural areas that use government-subsidized broadband services. The NCTA claimed that 4mbit/s was sufficiently fast and that it did not need to be increased to 10. 
  • Powell has explicitly advocated for the implementation of data caps by ISPs. This program would limit the amount of data customers can access on their home internet in a similar way that many wireless phone plans have data limits.
  • In a Huffington Post op-ed, Powell argued that there is no reason to expand gigabit broadband access, characterizing gigabit as only being useful for “bragging rights”. 
    • Former FCC chairman Genachowski, on the other hand, argued that expanding gigabit broadband access can help us improve many vital services: “Gigabit networks can enable genetic sequencing to treat cancer patients, immersive and creative software to support lifelong learning from home and ways for small businesses to take advantage of Big Data,”

Image Attribution: “Brendan Carr, Michael O’Rielly & Ajit Pai” by Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ. CC BY-SA 2.0