Softbank hires lobbyists in bid to buy Sprint

Japanese cellphone service provider Softbank has hired the Carmen Group, a Washington lobbying firm, as it looks to persuade regulators to allow it to buy control of Sprint, according to disclosure forms posted Thursday.

Softbank and Sprint agreed earlier this month to a $20.1 billion deal would give Softbank a 70 percent stake in Sprint.

The deal would inject cash into Sprint, the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, and could bolster the company's efforts to compete with industry giants Verizon and AT&T. The move is unlikely to raise the same anti-competitive concerns that led the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department to block AT&T's purchase of T-Mobile last year. 

But AT&T has sounded alarm over the fact that the Softbank-Sprint deal would give a foreign company control over large chunks of the nation's airwaves. 

"Softbank's acquisition of Sprint and the control it gains over Clearwire will give one of Japan's largest wireless companies control of significantly more U.S. wireless spectrum than any other company," Brad Burns, an AT&T vice president, said in a statement last week. "We expect that fact and others will be fully explored in the regulatory review process."

T-Mobile, the fourth-largest U.S. carrier, is owned by Deutsche Telekom, a German company. 

According to the disclosure form, David Carmen, the founder of the Carmen group, will lobby for the Sprint-Softbank deal, along with John Ladd, a former House Judiciary Committee aide; Bill Signer, a former aide to Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.); and Alyssa Ewing. 

---