FCC Boss Ajit Pai Annoyed As Neutrality Fight Heads to the House

Authored by dslreports.com and submitted by mvea

FCC Boss Ajit Pai Annoyed As Neutrality Fight Heads to the House

This week's 52-47 vote in the Senate to try and restore the FCC's net neutrality rules isn't going over particularly well with ISPs and FCC boss Ajit Pai.

USTelecom, a lobbying group primarily funded and directed by AT&T, penned yet another extremely misleading blog post falsely claiming that restoring net neutrality rules (backed by 86% of the public) would somehow "undercut the competitive edge of our digital economy," and "throws into reverse our shared goal of maintaining an open, thriving Internet."

FCC boss Ajit Pai also spent some time whining about efforts to restore rules that see huge, bipartisan public approval.

"It’s disappointing that Senate Democrats forced this resolution through by a narrow margin," complained the FCC boss in a statement. "But ultimately, I'm confident that their effort to reinstate heavy-handed government regulation of the Internet will fail."

Pai's claims that the rules are "heavy handed" are false. In fact, the FCC's 2015 net neutrality rules are among the more modest rules passed internationally, especially when compared to countries like Canada or India (which have both taken harder stances on things like zero rating). As for "narrow margins," Senator Ed Market was quick to note Pai was appointed by a similarly-narrow margin:

“The Internet was free and open before 2015, when the prior FCC buckled to political pressure from the White House and imposed utility-style regulation on the Internet," proclaimed Pai. "And it will continue to be free and open once the Restoring Internet Freedom Order takes effect on June 11."

Pai and the telecom lobby's continued claims that net neutrality is "utility-style regulation" is false. In fact, the previous FCC went out of its was to forbear from most of the heavier-handed aspects of utility-style regulation when it passed the rules. Given that ISPs (with Pai's help) are simultaneously trying to gut FCC, FTC and state oversight of monopolies like Comcast, Pai's claims that he's somehow "restoring freedom" by letting monopolies run amok remain comical.

Meanwhile, the CRA reversal effort heads to the House. Rep. Mike Doyle has filed a discharge petition, which would force a vote on the House resolution to restore net neutrality rules, but only if the House is able to secure 218 votes. From there, the proposal would need to avoid a veto by President Trump to have the rules restored.

That's an arguably uphill battle given how successful ISP lobbyists have been at falsely framing net neutrality (read: keeping the internet open and competitive) as a partisan issue. Still, even if the gambit fails, it will still provide voters with a handy checklist of which politicians actually back consumers, and which are willing to sell out the health of the internet and consumer welfare simply to deliver fatter revenues to AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.

i_am_gingercus on May 18th, 2018 at 22:07 UTC »

Oh I’m sorry, Ajit. Did we annoy you with our desire to have a democratically decided decision?

iLoveThe49ers on May 18th, 2018 at 21:32 UTC »

Oh no, boo boo hoo boo Ajit. As if the whole fucking country isn't annoyed that we even have to fight for this...