Commissioner Pai’s Remarks on the 100th Anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment

In light of the anniversary of the Kingsbury Commitment, an agreement between AT&T and the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commissioner Ajit Pai made the following remarks at the TechFreedom’s Forum about what a new commitment would look like. “There shouldn’t be a new Kingsbury Commitment. We don’t need a new Kingsbury Commitment for the wireless world, and we don’t need one for an all-IP world either.”

Instead, he said, the lessons from history should be:

• Government should not try to manage competition.
• Government should not confuse the goal of protecting competitors with the objective of promoting competition.
• Beware of businesses bearing commitments. Companies do not offer commitments out of the goodness of their hearts. Instead, as in the case of the Kingsbury Commitment, these commitments are generally designed to serve a company’s self-interest.

Finally, Commissioner Pai concluded, “We should view that agreement not as an inspiration for the future but rather as a warning. It is a warning that regulatory capture is a real risk.”