FCC chairman misleads in effort to destroy net neutrality

[Commentary] If Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s network neutrality proposal was shocking, his justifications for it ranged from the misleading to the flat-out false. Chairman Pai argues, for example, that Tom Wheeler’s net neutrality rules represented a radical departure for the FCC, moving it from a “light-touch” regulatory regime that had allowed the internet to thrive over the last 20 years to an outdated and “heavy-handed” one that’s put the internet under government control. There’s so much wrong with this argument that’s hard to know where to start.

But that was just one of Pai’s misleading justifications. Relying on industry-backed studies, he also argued that investment in broadband has declined over the last two years thanks to the net neutrality rules. But according to a study authored by Free Press, in the two-year period following the passage of the new rules, investment by the broadband providers that are public companies is actually up compared with the two-year period immediately before they were passed.