The T-Mobile NOligarchy Profile
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T-Mobile scores 5.9 out of 100 on the NOligarchy index — the lower the score, the more the company’s choices raise accountability concerns across political influence, wealth distribution, and legal compliance. For a carrier pulling in $88.3 billion in annual revenue and holding a significant position in the American wireless market, that number reflects a set of choices that consistently favor executives and shareholders over the workers keeping the network running.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
9.3
Wealth Extraction
3.1
Playing by the Rules
7.7
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: 9.29/100. Near the bottom of the scale. From Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 — the two-year tracking period — T-Mobile poured more than $21.7 million into federal lobbying and channeled another $1.2 million through its Political Action Committee (PAC). That combined spend puts T-Mobile among the most aggressive political operators tracked.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 3.03/100. Close to the floor. T-Mobile spent more than $21 billion buying back its own stock across the two most recent fiscal years while its median employee earned $76,141. The CEO-to-worker pay gap stands at 499:1.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 3.27/100. Near the very bottom of the scale. T-Mobile accumulated $63,707,000 in regulatory fines and penalties across 4 cases during the two-year tracking period, led by a $60 million trade violation. The company holds the worst penalty record in its sector.
T-Mobile ranks 5th out of 5 companies in the Wired and wireless telecommunications carriers (except satellite) sector, with a NOligarchy score of 5.9 against a sector average of 35.7. T-Mobile scores well below the sector average — making it an accountability outlier even within its own industry classification. For higher-scoring places to shop, see the Better Alternatives section below.
The Bottom Line: $21 Billion to Shareholders, $23 Million to Politicians, $64 Million in Fines — and $76,141 for the Median Worker
The sharpest imbalance in T-Mobile’s public record is the collision of three simultaneous choices: handing Wall Street more than $21 billion in buybacks, spending roughly $23 million pressing Washington for favorable rules, and accumulating nearly $64 million in regulatory fines — all while the median worker’s annual earnings sat at $76,141. T-Mobile generated $88.3 billion in annual revenue, per SEC EDGAR 10-K (CIK 0001283699), and funneled a staggering share of it into a stock buyback program totaling more than $21.2 billion across fiscal years 2024 and 2025 — a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses. Simultaneously, the company spent approximately $23 million on lobbying, PAC contributions, and executive campaign donations. Regulators took notice: four enforcement actions produced a total fine bill of nearly $64 million, led by a $60 million penalty from the federal government’s foreign investment watchdog.
$23 million in political spending
Statue of Liberty · 151 ft
0.5×
Stacked as $100 bills, T-Mobile's $23 million in political spending rises 83 feet — 0.5× the height of the Statue of Liberty (the statue alone, 151 ft).
$21 Million at the Door While the Rules Get Written
T-Mobile came to Washington with money and stayed that way. Over the two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026, the company deployed $21,734,000 in federal lobbying expenditures — as recorded in Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) filings.
The pace of spending accelerated sharply. T-Mobile channeled $5.34 million through lobbying in 2024, then nearly doubled that to $11.14 million in 2025, with an additional $5.25 million already logged through the first two quarters of 2026. That surge tracked directly alongside legislative activity on issues central to T-Mobile’s business model: spectrum allocation, broadband infrastructure funding, and the regulatory authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
The issue areas the company lobbied on are not abstract — they are the precise policy levers that determine how much T-Mobile pays for the airwaves it sells, who can bid against it in spectrum auctions, and what consumer protections apply to its subscriber base. LDA filings show lobbyists referencing the Spectrum Pipeline Act of 2025, the Supporting National Security with Spectrum Act, and spectrum provisions in the HR 1 One Big Beautiful Bill Act — all directly tied to the company’s core asset. Filings also cited the Junk Fee Prevention Act (provisions related to broadband), the Broadband Buildout Accountability Act, and the PLAN for Broadband Act — each relevant to how T-Mobile competes for federal broadband infrastructure dollars through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. On the tax side, lobbyists named bonus depreciation, the Book Minimum Tax, and spectrum swap tax treatment — issues with direct dollar implications for a company of T-Mobile’s scale.
Alongside the lobbying operation, T-Mobile’s PAC distributed $1,246,000 to federal candidates, per Federal Election Commission (FEC) data. Of the partisan-allocated portion, 51.8% went to Democratic candidates ($470,500) and 48.2% to Republican candidates ($438,000) — a near-perfect split that is not ideological but architectural. A company holding 13.78% of the wired and wireless telecommunications market cannot afford enemies on either side of the aisle when spectrum policy, merger reviews, and privacy legislation are moving through committees it has already lobbied.
T-Mobile's PAC gave $470,500 to Democrats and $438,000 to Republicans — a 51.8% / 48.2% split that buys access to whichever party wins.
51.8%
48.2%
Democrats · $470,500
Republicans · $438,000
ACCESS-BUYER PENALTY APPLIED
T-Mobile’s executives also added $53,401 in personal federal campaign contributions during the same span, per FEC records. These are personal donations from people whose financial fortunes are tied directly to regulatory decisions about the industry they run.
The Revolving Door: Of the 15 lobbyists T-Mobile deployed during this period, 11 came through the revolving door between government and industry. The most consequential is Christine Kurth, who served as Special Counsel in the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau from 2013 to 2015 — and is now lobbying on behalf of a company the FCC directly oversees. That is institutional knowledge about how an agency pursues enforcement, applied from the other side of the table. Natalie Armijo previously served as Chief of Staff to Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, and Adam Peterman served as Deputy Chief of Staff to a House member for eight years. T-Mobile’s LDA filings also flag foreign entity involvement in its lobbying activity — the nature of that connection is not detailed in the public record.
$21 Billion to Wall Street, a Median Worker Earning Less Than the CEO Makes in a Week
Start with the CEO. T-Mobile’s pay ratio is 499:1, as disclosed in the SEC DEF 14A, measured against the median T-Mobile employee’s annual salary of $76,141. The CEO’s total compensation in the most recent reported fiscal year was about $38 million. Put plainly: the chief executive earned what the median worker earns in roughly 499 years. In a single workweek, the CEO took home more than most T-Mobile employees earn across an entire year.
That ratio sits alongside a buyback program of extraordinary scale. According to SEC 10-K filings, T-Mobile spent $11.228 billion buying back its own stock in fiscal year 2024, and $9.974 billion in fiscal year 2025. That is $21.202 billion across two fiscal years — a deliberate reduction in shares outstanding that inflates per-share metrics and triggers executive performance bonuses for the same leaders who approved the spending, equivalent to roughly 24% of T-Mobile’s annual revenue across those two years.
The company records no dividend payments. Where a traditional dividend program spreads returns more broadly — including to pension funds and small investors — T-Mobile concentrated all shareholder payouts into buybacks instead. That is a more targeted instrument: it benefits most the largest institutional holders and insiders who can time their exits to capture inflated share prices.
The company made a deliberate choice. The money spent on buying back its own stock could have instead handed every single one of its 71,242 workers a $297,605 raise, spread across the last two fiscal years. Spread evenly across those two years, that works out to a $148,802.67 annual raise the company chose not to give.
Buybacks vs. Workers
What the buyback spend could have meant for 71K employees
Spent on buybacks
$21.2B
directed to shareholders
÷ 71K
workers
Per-worker raise
$297,605
per employee, 2-year total
Spread over those 2 years, that's a 195% annual raise on the median worker's $76,141 salary — money the company chose to send to shareholders instead.
EARNINGS STATEMENT — ANNUAL
EMPLOYEE: 1 of 71,242
Your share of the buyback
+$297,605
Per biweekly paycheck
+$5,723
SPENT INFLATING THE SHARE PRICE
Stock buybacks over the two most recent fiscal years: $21.2 billion.
Spread across T-Mobile's 71,242 employees, its stock buybacks over the last two fiscal years come to $297,605 per worker — about $5,723 on each of the 52 biweekly paychecks in that span.
The buybacks also directly serve the executives who approved them. When shares outstanding fall, Earnings Per Share (EPS) rises automatically — even if the underlying business has not grown. That rising EPS triggers the performance bonuses written into executive compensation contracts. At a 499:1 pay ratio, the people at the top of T-Mobile have a direct financial incentive to keep buybacks flowing, and the data shows they have acted on it consistently.
$64 Million in Fines, Led by a Federal Trade Watchdog Penalty
The two-year tracking period from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 produced four enforcement actions against T-Mobile totaling $63,707,000 in fines and penalties, per Good Jobs First. T-Mobile holds the worst penalty record among all tracked companies in its sector. These four cases cover the public record for this period; Good Jobs First maintains a full historical docket extending well beyond this window, of which these two years represent a single slice.
The largest single penalty was a $60,000,000 fine from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in 2024 for trade violations — the dominant enforcement action of the period, accounting for 94 cents of every dollar T-Mobile paid in fines across these two years. A federal benefit plan lawsuit, arising from T-Mobile’s legacy Sprint operations, settled for $3,500,000 in 2024. A California Public Utilities Commission utility violation cost $200,000, and a further FCC consumer protection case in 2025 added $7,000.
Regulatory Violations by Year
$63.7M · 4 cases
$63.7M
2024
3 cases
$7K
2025
1 case
While regulators were issuing those fines, governments simultaneously handed T-Mobile public money. A single $37,400 grant arrived in 2024, tracked by Good Jobs First Subsidy Tracker, with the grant details on file. For a company generating $88.3 billion in annual revenue, $37,400 in public support is a rounding error — but the same governments whose regulators were writing eight-figure enforcement orders were also writing T-Mobile a check.