The AT&T NOligarchy Profile
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AT&T scores 17.57 out of 100 on the NOligarchy scale — measured from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). That places AT&T in the lowest accountability tier: a company that poured $29 million into political access, paid its chief executive 215 times what its median worker takes home, and collected more than $16 million in regulatory penalties in just two years.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
3.4
Wealth Extraction
33.8
Playing by the Rules
21.1
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 3.36/100. AT&T spent $26.3 million on federal lobbying and channeled another $2.7 million through its Political Action Committee (PAC) — one of the most aggressive influence footprints in the sector, earning a near-zero grade.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 33.81/100. The chief executive collected nearly $30 million in a single fiscal year against a median employee salary of $139,026. No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for the period, which limits how far the score can fall, but the pay gap alone drives it deep into failing territory.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 21.12/100. Seven regulatory cases totaling $16.3 million in fines — led by a $13 million privacy penalty — produced a score that reflects a company for whom regulatory infractions are a recurring feature of operations, not an anomaly.
AT&T ranks 3rd out of 5 among companies sharing its federal industry classification (wired and wireless telecommunications carriers, except satellite). Its score of 17.57 sits well below the sector average of 34.2. For higher-scoring alternatives in this space, see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: $29 Million to Stay in the Game While Workers and Regulators Wait Their Turn
AT&T generated $125.6 billion in annual revenue — roughly a billion dollars every three days — and chose to spend $29 million of it buying political access in Washington. Over that same two-year stretch, its CEO pocketed nearly $30 million in a single year while the company’s 131,107 workers earned a median of $139,026 — and regulators handed the company more than $16 million in fines for privacy and consumer protection failures. AT&T did not face a cash constraint; it faced a priorities problem.
AT&T's $29 million in political spending equals 360 years of median-household income — enough people, one per year worked, to fill 2 fully-boarded 737s.
Spending to Buy a Seat at Every Table
AT&T did not pick a side in Washington — it bought access to both sides. Over the two-year tracking period, AT&T’s lobbyists filed for $26.3 million in federal lobbying fees, an average of over $3 million every quarter. That is not a government affairs budget — it is an infrastructure investment in political dependence.
The single heaviest lobbying category — filed 113 times — was Telecommunications, covering spectrum allocation, broadband permitting, network security, universal service subsidies, and online privacy rules. These are not abstract policy debates. Every one of them touches a regulatory decision that can directly add or subtract billions from AT&T’s bottom line. Lobbyists also engaged 40 times on tax issues, referencing bills including PL 119-21, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the Broadband Grant Tax Treatment Act — measures with direct implications for AT&T’s effective tax rate and its access to federal broadband grant funding.
The breadth of specific legislation AT&T’s lobbyists named is striking. In a single quarter — Q2 2026 — filings cited more than 50 named bills touching broadband deployment, spectrum rights, cybersecurity liability, child safety online, artificial intelligence governance, and copyright enforcement for internet service providers. A filing that cites the Foreign Adversary Communications Transparency (FACT) Act alongside the Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act, known as the COPIED Act, tells you something important: AT&T is not lobbying on a single issue — it is attempting to shape the entire legal environment in which it operates.
AT&T’s PAC contributed $2.7 million across the two years. The partisan split — 56.9% to Democrats and 43.1% to Republicans — is textbook bipartisan access buying: enough to maintain a warm reception regardless of which party controls a committee chairmanship.
AT&T's PAC gave $917,500 to Democrats and $695,500 to Republicans — a 56.9% / 43.1% split that buys access to whichever party wins.
56.9%
43.1%
Democrats · $917,500
Republicans · $695,500
ACCESS-BUYER PENALTY APPLIED
AT&T retained 16 outside lobbying firms, 5 of which simultaneously represent other major corporations tracked in this database — including Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which also lobbies for Dell Technologies, KKR & Co., Ralph Lauren, PVH Corp, and Shein. That network of shared outside firms carries a multiplier effect of 1.51 — meaning AT&T’s raw lobbying spend understates its effective reach by roughly half again.
Shared Lobbying Exposure
AT&T
client
AKIN GUMP STRAUSS HAUER & FELD
lobbying firm
Dell Technologies Inc
also a client
KKR & Co. Inc.
also a client
PVH Corp
also a client
+2 more
clients
OGR also lobbies for Bath & Body Works Inc, Tapestry Inc
ARNOLD & PORTER KAYE SCHOLER LLP also lobbies for Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
CAPITOL COUNSEL LLC also lobbies for Nike Inc
ROBERTI GLOBAL (FKA ROBERTI WHITE, LLC) also lobbies for Samsung Electronics America Inc
Why it matters: the same firm argues AT&T’s case and its rivals’ — one hire buys a web of shared access that can’t be seen from outside. This network worsens AT&T’s political-access score (see methodology for the exact factor).
Fifteen of AT&T’s 126 registered lobbyists previously held government positions — a roster that includes former chiefs of staff, legislative directors, and a former 21-year U.S. Representative. These are not policy generalists; they are people who know which staffer to call and which hallway to walk down.
A CEO Earning a Year’s Pay Before Lunchtime in January
AT&T’s CEO pay ratio is 215:1, according to the SEC DEF 14A. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $29.9 million. The company’s 131,107 workers — technicians, customer service representatives, network engineers — took home a median salary of $139,026.
CEO — MEDIAN-PAY MARKER
JANUARY
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passes the median employee’s full annual pay
10:40 AM · January 2
215× the median employee’s pay
At 215:1, AT&T's CEO earns the median employee's entire annual pay by 10:40 AM on January 2.
No stock buyback or dividend totals are recorded for the two-year tracking period, which means no per-worker raise calculation is possible. What is on the public record is this: AT&T chose to allocate nearly $30 million to its top executive in a single year while its effective federal tax rate — discussed below — sat 7.6 percentage points below what Congress set as the standard rate.
AT&T paid an effective tax rate of 13.4% — 7.6 percentage points below the 21% federal statutory rate that Congress set. The company’s own 10-K discloses a rate reconciliation in which the largest single rate-cutting item was the divestiture of DIRECTV, which reduced the effective rate by 4.9 percentage points in 2025. Research and development credits trimmed another 0.5 points. State and local tax effects, cross-border tax laws, and noncontrolling interest exclusions added further reductions. The filing attributes specific state effects to California in 2025 and to Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Texas in 2024.
AT&T chose to pay 7.6 percentage points less than the rate Congress set. That gap is not an accounting accident — it is a structural decision that shifts real tax burden off AT&T’s balance sheet and onto everyone else. On top of that, AT&T holds Unrecognized Tax Benefits equal to 28% of its pre-tax income — contested deductions it has claimed on its taxes that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has not yet agreed are valid.
Fines as a Rounding Error on a $126 Billion Balance Sheet
Over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, AT&T accumulated seven regulatory cases totaling $16.3 million in penalties. Against $125.6 billion in annual revenue, that sum represents roughly 0.01% of sales — not a deterrent but a line item.
The largest single category was privacy violations, which accounted for $13 million out of the total $16.3 million — a single case decided by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2024. That penalty alone is large enough to absorb the attention of most companies. For AT&T, it represents a few hours of revenue.
Telecommunications violations added another $3.25 million across two FCC cases. A utility service case in Kansas carried a $60,000 fine. Three workplace safety citations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), covering AT&T entities in California, Texas, and Alaska, totaled under $30,000 combined.
This is the median American household.
Two earners, a kid, a dog, $80,610 a year — the exact middle of the country (U.S. Census).
NOTICE OF PENALTY — HOUSEHOLD SCALE
ISSUED TO
the median U.S. household
BASIS
0.01% of annual income
$10.48
the same share of income that $16.3 million in penalties takes of the company’s revenue
AT&T's $16.3 million in regulatory penalties is 0.01% of its revenue — for a median household, the same bite as a $10.48 ticket.
The pattern across seven cases in two years is not the picture of a company straining to comply. It is the picture of a company large enough that even serial regulatory friction costs less than a rounding error.
While regulators were issuing those fines, governments simultaneously handed AT&T public money. Three grants totaling $58,539 were recorded between 2024 and 2025, led by a $54,700 grant in Pennsylvania in 2024. The dollar amounts are modest by AT&T’s scale, but the dynamic is consistent: penalties for rule-breaking on one hand, public support on the other.