The head of the Federal Communications Commission wants to embrace a “light touch” approach to regulation under his leadership and the new administration.
“Light touch regulation means that we create broad regulatory frameworks that can protect consumers to ensure an overall competitive marketplace,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” last week. “But we shouldn’t micromanage how these companies operate their businesses in the absence of evidence of a market failure.”
Despite threatening to take a “weed wacker” to regulations championed by his predecessor under former President Barack Obama, Pai, in his first several weeks as chairman, has so far exhibited that light touch in how he is unraveling Obama-era regulations and practices.
Pai has long been a critic of “net neutrality” rules put in place by former Democratic Chairman Tom Wheeler as a way to prevent service providers from blocking or throttling content on the Internet. During the CNBC interview, Pai maintained his silence on how he plans on reversing the regulations, saying only that he is studying the issue and is speaking to members of Congress about it.
In terms of regulatory action, Pai has taken steps to weaken, but not yet reverse, what his Republican colleague Michael O’Rielly warned is the commission’s “unmitigated power over the Internet.”
The FCC voted to expand a transparency exemption to Internet service providers with up to 250,000 subscribers, up from the original exemption of 100,000 subscribers that expired last year, that Pai argued protects them from “needless regulation” of publicly disclosing promotional rates, fees or data caps for the next five years.
The FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau also ended an investigation, initiated under Wheeler, into whether the “zero rating” policies of AT&T and Verizon were violating net neutrality by allowing customers to stream video services owned by a wireless carrier without eating into their data plan.
The chairman’s careful approach to change is also evident in his push to increase transparency at the FCC.
This month, Pai revealed a “pilot project” to provide the public more insight into the agency’s activities. He released two documents that would be voted on at the FCC’s February meeting regarding television broadcasters use of ATSC 3.0, “the next-generation broadcast standard,” and “giving AM radio broadcasters more flexibility in siting their FM translators.” Pai told reporters that if successful, the pilot project would morph into commission practice.
Pai has long been a critic of the FCC’s practice of releasing commission documents after a vote, calling it “precisely the opposite of transparency.” Wheeler warned during a 2015 congressional hearing that “releasing the text of a draft order in advance of a commission vote effectively re-opens the comment period.”
Wheeler explained that the commission would be beholden to answering to these comments in the form of another draft order, or else face legal action.
“The end result: the threat of a never-ending story that prevents the commission from acting — or forces it to accept undue legal risk of reversal if it ever does,” Wheeler said. “This potential for extreme delay undermines the commission’s efficiency without enhancing its expertise. And it does so at the cost of the consumers and businesses that rely on commission decisions.”
Still, Pai’s battle for more transparency has been a long time coming. He tweeted out a picture of himself in 2015 next to a portrait of Obama, holding what he said was “President Obama’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet,” referring to a draft order of the FCC’s net neutrality regulations three weeks before the commission voted on it. “I wish the public could see what’s inside,” Pai added.
It wasn’t until two weeks after the vote that the full text was released.
Regardless of net neutrality’s fate and the transparency trial result, Pai envisions an endgame that he said provides more power to consumer.
During a recent speech to the North American Broadcasters Association, Pai said he has no intention of putting his “thumb on the scale for any segment of the communications industry” as chairman. “Instead,” he continued, “I see it as my job to ensure a level regulatory playing field. It then falls to American consumers to decide who wins and loses with their ears, their eyeballs, their clicks and their wallets.”
