Ajit Pai thanks Congress for helping him kill net neutrality rules
Ajit Pai thanks Congress for helping him kill net neutrality rules

                      
                      
          Ajit Pai today celebrated a victory in his ongoing quest to prevent the US government from enforcing net neutrality rules.
The Pai-led Federal Communications Commission repealed Obama-era net neutrality rules, but the repeal could have been reversed by Congress if it acted before the end of its session. Democrats won a vote to reverse the repeal in the Senate but weren't able to get enough votes in the House of Representatives before time ran out.
"I'm pleased that a strong bipartisan majority of the US House of Representatives declined to reinstate heavy-handed Internet regulation," Pai said in a statement marking the deadline passage today. Pai claimed that broadband speed improvements and new fiber deployments in 2018 occurred because of his net neutrality repeal—although speeds and fiber deployment also went in the right direction while net neutrality rules were in place.
"Over the past year, the Internet has remained free and open," Pai said, adding that "the FCC's light-touch approach is working." Pai didn't mention a recent case in which CenturyLink temporarily blocked its customers' Internet access in order to show an ad or a recent research report accusing Sprint of throttling Skype (which Sprint denies).
Pai is “full of it”
"As usual, Ajit Pai is full of it," Deputy Director Evan Greer of advocacy group Fight for the Future told Ars. "His claim that broadband speeds are up is the tech policy equivalent of 'it's snowing outside, therefore climate change is a hoax.'"
Fight for the Future and other advocates led a campaign to pressure Congress into reversing the repeal. In the end, 182 US representatives (nearly all of them Democrats) supported the bill, but 218 votes were needed.
"The fight is far from over," Greer said. "Dozens of anti-net neutrality members of Congress have already lost their jobs, and supporters of the open Internet will soon chair the key committees that provide oversight for the FCC. Ajit Pai won't be laughing long when he has finally has to answer questions like why his agency lied to the media about a DDoS attack that never happened."

          
                      
                  