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SNET: Still a Leader?
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Business New Haven
1/12/1998
By: BNH
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Beyond the parties themselves (who understandably aren't saying much beyond the usual blue-sky platitudes), no one much knows exactly what the acquisition of Southern New England Telephone by Texas giant SBC Communications will mean for Connecticut business and residential telecom consumers - that is, everyone.
Will rates go up, down or stay the same? We don't know yet. Will the management team headed by Dan Miglio, Ron Serrano and Don Shassian stick around, or float to earth in parachutes fabricated of the finest gold? For now, they say, they're staying.
For the time being, these questions are chiefly of academic interest. It's not too early, however, to begin to ask an additional question that bears on the quality of life for many of us in the region and state: What kind of corporate citizen will be the new, no-longer-independent SNET?
It's a welcome sign that SBC has pledged to retain SNET's corporate headquarters in New Haven - but, really, where else would they go? SNET paid $3.5 million in city taxes in 1996, making the company the Elm City's second-highest taxpayer.
In announcing the new deal, SNET CEO Miglio also promised that his subsidiary-to-be would continue its “traditionally strong support of community activities, education, economic development and quality of life.”
Traditionally strong, indeed. In an era when most companies no longer support cultural and/or philanthropic endeavors unless they can see return dollars spelled out in black and white, SNET has often been the savior of last resort in a crumbling economy.
In New Haven alone, in the last two years SNET has underwritten city-sponsored festivals from the HarborFest to the summer jazz series on the Green to the August street festival - more than $100,000 on those events alone in 1996 and '97. The two-year-old International Festival of Arts & Ideas probably would have been stillborn if not for SNET's early and ample support.
Why has SNET been the excellent corporate citizen it has been over the years? It's simple. For more than a century SNET and its fortunes have been tied to one small piece of New England real estate. Its top executives are your neighbors, and with that has come their own clear understanding of communities' needs. Eventually that will no longer be the case, and corporate largess most likely will become institutionalized in a way that may make SNET's support for such unique needs as jazz concerts or poetry readings less likely, or subject to marketing issues.
When the Waterbury-based Centerbank was gobbled up by North Carolina-based (and now, since its own merger with Core States Bank, Philadelphia-based - it's not easy to keep track) giant First Union Bank in 1995, the latter made all the right noises about continued support for community endeavors both cultural and philanthropic. Two years later, most disinterested observers would be forced to agree that, by and large, those noises were just that - noise. The bank's abandonment of Waterbury was even the subject of a recent full-length feature in Connecticut magazine.
If SNET's acquisition by another national behemoth produces a similar outcome, the life of our community will be poorer for it.
Can we in tiny Connecticut make a difference to a $67 billion telecom giant based 2,000 miles away? We certainly can and must. Business and political leadership must exert moral authority and clarify what is required by stakeholders of their major corporate employers and suppliers.
As business and residential consumers, we can make choices with our pocketbooks that were not an option before the sweeping changes mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 - legislation that, unfortunately, has produced far more concentration of ownership than competition across all communications industries to date.
New Haven and Connecticut need SNET's continued presence not just as a “player” - to use one of Dan Miglio's favorite words - but as a leader. After all, for more than a century they have practically defined the role.
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