Today, David Neumark, professor of Economics and director of the Center for Economics and Public Policy at the University of California at Irvine, released an independent analysis debunking assertions made by AT&T that its proposed takeover of T-Mobile would be good for American jobs. RTG’s General Counsel, Carri Bennet, issued the following statement:

Yesterday’s last ditch effort to save the transaction by bringing 5,000 call center jobs back to the United States if the merger is approved, was an unfortunate example of not only bad math, but poor corporate citizenship. Bringing jobs back to the United States should never be used to extort government approval. Companies like ours, who have kept our jobs here in America, are working hard every day to bring broadband to rural communities across the country as perhaps AT&T ought to consider instead of taking over its competitors.

Today’s study demystifies AT&T’s repeated claims of job creation resulting from its takeover of T-Mobile, and demonstrates how AT&T’s continual use of fuzzy math to distract the proposed merger’s impact on the economy has been nothing more than a shell game. In fact, Professor Neumark goes on to show how AT&T has systematically eliminated over 107,000 jobs as a direct result of its string of mergers and acquisitions since 2002, and has indicated to Wall Street that it intends to do the same with this one.

About RTG – Headquartered in Washington, DC, the Rural Telecommunications Group, Inc. (RTG) is a trade association representing rural wireless carriers who each serve less than 100,000 subscribers. RTG’s members have joined together to speed delivery of new, efficient and innovative telecommunications technologies to remote and underserved communities. ruraltelecomgroup.org @RTGwireless

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