Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, defended the recent repeal of net neutrality rules during a Q&A in Lansing on Thursday, saying that the move was necessary to increase competition among internet service providers.
“The effects of these regulations were holding back investment and innovation,” Pai said. “The number one concern I hear consistently from consumers is that 'we don’t have internet access at all,' or 'we don’t have enough competition — we’re locked into one provider.' The solution to that is not heavily regulating something out of Washington, making it even harder for a company to build a business case for deployment.”
Ultimately, Pai said that the net neutrality rules were unfairly affecting small internet service providers, leading to a lack of potential to bridge the "digital divide."
“Smaller companies that perhaps none of you have heard of, these are the companies that are critical to providing access and competition. These are the companies that bore the brunt of these regulations,” Pai said. “When it comes to something like the digital divide, all of us gain when Americans are connected.”
But only so much can be done at the federal level to address the divide, so some of the responsibility falls on states, Pai said.
“I think the most important thing that state officials could do … is to create a consistent set of policies. If you are a company, big or small, it is difficult, if not prohibitive, to jump through the hoops of regulatory review on the federal level, on the state level, on the perhaps thousands of municipalities that are involved,” Pai said. “One of the things we’re trying to do is create a consistent set of rules that companies can work around.”
Regarding concerns that the lack of net neutrality rules would allow service providers to charge more for access to certain websites, throttle access to some content providers, or outright block information from users, Pai said that the agency took all of that into account when writing the regulations’ replacements.
“We instituted a very strict transparency rule at the FCC. Every single internet service provider, big or small, has to disclose to us and to the American public all kinds of business practices so that everybody will know exactly how they’re operating,” Pai said. “Going forward, we’re going to continue to have the free and open internet that we’ve had."
"As you might have noticed, the internet still works over the 100 days or so since we repealed these regulations.”
A resolution passed in the U.S. Senate in May — a month before the net neutrality repeal took effect — would undo the FCC's decision and restore the net neutrality regulations. To date, 179 U.S. Representatives have signed a petition to force a vote on the resolution in the House, 39 short of the 218 needed to do so.
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