Not Ready to Ride Into the Sunset: Chairman Wheeler and the Fight for Internet Regulation

[Commentary] There is a long-standing tradition in American politics that when your term of office is over, you retreat quietly into the background and allow a tasteful period of time to pass before you get back into the arena. Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, however, does not appear to have bought into that tradition. Wheeler, apparently unhappy about the efforts of his successor, Ajit Pai, to undo the former chairman's signature regulatory enactment— the imposition of legacy common carrier price regulation on the internet—has continued to advocate for the survival of the regulatory structures he instituted while in office. It is difficult to see how the former chairman's internet policy is likely to make broadband services more available, better, or cheaper.

Whatever the role the FCC has to play in the modern communications market, Wheeler's retrogressive regulatory approach is counterproductive. America appears now to be suffering the consequences of it. If, as the data appear to suggest, Wheeler's signature regulatory contribution has cost the nation billions in network investment, reduced employment by 100,000 telecommunications jobs per year, and slowed improvements in broadband quality, it is incumbent on his successor to press forward with the clean-up hastily. Happily, Chairman Pai appears intent on doing precisely that. The sooner the broadband industry gets to say, “good riddance” to the Wheeler FCC's Title II regulatory regime, the better.

[Ford is Chief Economist of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies]