FCC Chief Ajit Pai Told CES a Bunch of Lies About Net Neutrality

More than two years after the Federal Communications Commission voted to trash the Obama-era net neutrality rules that guaranteed equal treatment for all online traffic, the architect of that repeal, Ajit Pai, finally brought his case to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the Donald Trump-appointed FCC chair, and former Verizon corporate lawyer, made a series of false and questionable claims to support his argument that ditching the rules was a great policy decision. At CES, Pai repeated his claim that repealing the net neutrality rules unleashed a wave of investment in network infrastructure. But big telecom companies Comcast and Charter Communications cut investment spending after the net neutrality rules were repealed.   In September of last year, as Motherboard reported, a massive, 10-year study conducted at George Washington University examined spending by telecom and other companies—finding the the net neutrality rules had no effect on how much the industry invested in infrastructure improvements one way or the other. A second major study, done by the group Free Press and reported by Motherboard, showed that internet service providers actually invested more in infrastructure while net neutrality rules were still in place than without them. Pai also told the CES audience that “more fiber was laid in 2019 to homes and businesses in the United States than in any year since they’ve been keeping records.”  But as Motherboard noted, much of the new fiber-optic infrastructure was built not by the major ISPs, but by “frustrated towns and cities building their own broadband networks.”  Pai and his Republican-controlled FCC have publicly and strongly opposed local communities that invest in their own broadband networks.  In fact, Republican FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly has absurdly claimed that allowing local communities to construct community-based broadband networks poses an “ominous” threat to First Amendment rights.  Pai also claimed that net neutrality repeal led to an increase in overall broadband speeds. But as TechDirt reported, “while broadband speeds have increased, there too is zero evidence that killing net neutrality was to thank for it.” Photo By U.S. Department of Agriculture / Wikimedia Commons Public Domain