FCC Commissioner Carr Remarks at US Chamber of Commerce

I met with small and rural broadband providers that told me that the Commission’s paperwork and reporting obligations alone now consume 23 weeks of work per year or five months of full-time labor. I heard from a small wireless provider that they have to take one of the few people they employ off of a customer service job or marketing effort and sit them in a room to complete FCC paperwork. These small businesses are not corporate behemoths. They do not have, and simply cannot afford, an army of regulatory lawyers. If we can eliminate these wasteful regulations, small businesses can get back to doing what they do best: serving their customers and creating jobs. But it is not just the paperwork burdens that had become the problem at the FCC. During the last Administration, the agency demonstrated a penchant for imposing costly and unnecessary regulations— ones that slowed down our nation’s transition to next-generation networks. The Obama-era FCC’s failed experiment with heavy-handed, utility-style regulation of the Internet is just one example. In the wake of that decision, capital expenditures by broadband providers declined for the first time ever outside of a recession. Less investment meant less deployment and, by one estimate, tens of thousands of lost jobs. But at the FCC, last January marked a turning point. We have reversed course and are now focusing on policies that will spur broadband deployment—a decision that can help create good-paying jobs across the economy.