Study Proves The FCC's Core Justification for Killing Net Neutrality Was False

A new study has found the Federal Communications Commission’s primary justification for repealing network neutrality was indisputably false. For years, big Internet service providers and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai have told anyone who’d listen that the FCC’s net neutrality rules, passed in 2015 and repealed in 2018 in a flurry of controversy and alleged fraud, dramatically stifled broadband investment across the US. Repeal the rules, Pai declared, and US broadband investment would explode. But a new study from George Washington University indicates that Chairman Pai’s claims were patently false. The study took a closer look at the earnings reports and SEC filings of 8,577 unique telecom companies from Q1 2009 through Q3 2018 to conclude that the passage and repeal of the rules had no meaningful impact on broadband investment.

Benton Senior Fellow Gigi Sohn, a former FCC lawyer who helped craft the FCC’s 2015 rules, said she hoped the comprehensive study would finally put an end to the debate. "This paper once again validates what the FCC found in 2015 and what net neutrality advocates have said for years—that neither the net neutrality rules nor Title II classification had any impact on ISP investment,” Sohn said. “Not surprisingly, the ISPs and their friends at the FCC and the Hill keep saying the opposite, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,” she added. “Hopefully this comprehensive study, which studies ISP investment over nearly a decade, will put this matter to rest.”

Derek Turner, research director for consumer group Free Press, said he doubted that would actually happen. “We don’t expect this study to kill the ISPs' zombie lies about net neutrality and investment,” he said. “The telecom companies and their defenders in Congress have long operated unmoored from reality, and no smoking gun is going to change that, certainly not one they’ll never bother to read and consider fairly.”