FCC Chairman Ajit Pai (left) with FCC general counsel and Republican FCC nominee Brendan Carr (right). (Image: Victor Hugo Mora Mendoza)

Federal Communications Commission Republican nominee Brendan Carr forgot to mention in sworn testimony before the U.S. Senate that his work at a D.C. law firm included representing AT&T, Verizon, and the wireless industry’s top lobbying trade association.

Carr, who today works as general counsel to the FCC under current chairman Ajit Pai, was nominated by Pai to serve as the third Republican FCC commissioner.

“Brendan’s expertise on wireless policy and public safety will be a tremendous asset to the Commission,” Pai said in a statement.

Mignon Clyburn is currently the sole Democratic Party commissioner, likely to be rejoined eventually by Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel if her re-nomination to the FCC is approved by the Senate.

At a confirmation hearing, Carr testified he “accepted a job at a law firm where [he] could gain broad experience working on various telecommunications issues” before taking a clerkship which “helped spark [his] interest in public service,” according to BroadbandBreakfast. What Carr did not mention is that work took place at D.C. powerhouse law firm Wiley Rein, where Carr represented the interests of AT&T, Verizon Communications (also a former client of Chairman Pai), and the industry-funded U.S. Telecom and CTIA trade associations which represent phone and wireless companies respectively.

The revelation isn’t expected to create a problem for Carr’s confirmation among Republicans, and Democrats don’t seem likely to create any obstacles for Carr either, perhaps because of a largess of campaign contributions from some of the same cable and phone companies that are likely to share Carr’s positions on issues expected to come before the Commission. Carr is widely expected to support Chairman Pai’s efforts to kill Net Neutrality policies at the FCC.

Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member Bill Nelson (D-Fla) told BroadbandBreakfast the issue won’t cause any delay in his upcoming confirmation vote. Nelson’s third largest contributor over the last five years was Comcast, which contributed close to $70,000 last year to Nelson’s campaign with a panoply of Comcast lobbyists and their families also donating significant sums. Verizon was Nelson’s 16th largest contributor with more than $37,000 in donations to his campaign last year and many thousands more from Verizon’s lobbyists.

FCC headquarters in Washington, D.C.

(Reuters) The U.S. Federal Communications Commission voted 2-1 on Thursday to advance a Republican plan to reverse the Obama administration’s 2015 “Net Neutrality” order.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai has proposed the commission repeal the rules that reclassified internet service providers as if they were utilities. He thinks the open internet rules by President Barack Obama, a Democrat, were unnecessary and harm jobs and investment.

“We propose to repeal utility-style regulation,” Pai said Thursday. “The evidence so far strongly suggests that this is the right way to go.”

The public will have until mid-August to offer comments before the FCC votes on a final plan.

Pai wants public input on whether the FCC has the authority or should keep its “bright line” rules barring internet companies from blocking, throttling or giving “fast lanes” to some websites. He has not committed to retaining any rules, but said he favors an “open internet.”

Pai said he would make a final proposal public before a final vote and said the FCC will conduct a cost-benefit analysis.

Democratic FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who voted against the plan, said the end game appears to be an internet without FCC regulatory oversight. She said the proposal “jeopardizes the ability of the open internet to function tomorrow, as it does today.”

The FCC, which has already received more than 1 million comments, is also seeking comment on whether U.S. states should be able to set their own broadband privacy or other regulations.

Facebook, Alphabet Inc, and others back Net Neutrality rules, saying they guarantee equal access to the internet.

Broadband providers AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications, and Comcast oppose the 2015 order, saying it would discourage investment and innovation.

Internet providers insist they will not engage in blocking or throttling even in the absence of rules, but critics are skeptical.

Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat, said “it will take millions of people standing up, just like they did before, to say that the internet needs to stay free and open. That’s what it will take to win.”

Comcast, Charter Communications, and Altice USA signed an advertisement Wednesday saying they are “committed to an open internet that gives you the freedom to be in charge of your online experience…. We do not block, throttle or otherwise impair your online activity.”

USTelecom, an industry trade group, said the FCC “is moving the conversation beyond the merits of Net Neutrality to how best to safeguard this universally embraced value with a modern, constructive policy framework.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Grant McCool)

U.S. House of Representatives

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. House voted on Tuesday 215-205 to repeal regulations requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers’ privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc’s Google or Facebook Inc.

The White House said earlier Tuesday that President Donald Trump strongly supports the repeal of the rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission in October under then-President Barack Obama.

Under the rules, internet providers would need to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children’s information and web browsing history for advertising and marketing.

Last week, the Senate voted 50-48 to reverse the rules in a win for AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc.

The White House in its statement said internet providers would need to obtain affirmative “opt-in” consent from consumers to use and share certain information, but noted that websites are not required to get the same consent. “This results in rules that apply very different regulatory regimes based on the identity of the online actor,” the White House said.

Websites are governed by a less restrictive set of privacy rules overseen by the Federal Trade Commission.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai in a statement praised the decision of Congress to overturn “privacy regulations designed to benefit one group of favored companies over another group of disfavored companies.” Last week, Pai said consumers would have privacy protections even without the Obama internet provider rules, but critics say they will weaker.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the measure, said companies “should not be able to use and sell the sensitive data they collect from you without your permission.”

An Internet & Television Association statement called the repeal “an important step toward restoring consumer privacy protections that apply consistently.”

One critic of the repeal, Craig Aaron, president of Free Press advocacy group, said major Silicon Valley companies shied away from the fight over the rules because they profit from consumer data.

“There are a lot of companies that are very concerned about drawing attention to themselves and being regulated on privacy issues, and are sitting this out in a way that they haven’t sat out previous privacy issues,” Aaron said.

Representative Michael Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Tuesday that Comcast could know his personal information because he looked up his mother’s medical condition and his purchase history. “Just last week I bought underwear on the internet. Why should you know what size I take? Or the color?” Capuano asked. “They are going to sell it to the underwear companies.”

Comcast declined to comment.

Representative Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican, said the rules “unfairly skews the market in favor” of websites that are free to collect data without consent.

Republican commissioners, including Pai, said in October that the rules would unfairly give websites like Facebook, Twitter Inc or Google the ability to harvest more data than internet service providers and thus further dominate digital advertising. The FCC earlier this month delayed the data rules from taking effect.

(Reporting by David Shepardson. Additional reporting by David Ingram and Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Grant McCool)

Ajit Pai

Meet America’s next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Ajit Varadaraj Pai (born January 10, 1973): a lawyer formerly representing Verizon who wants to take a “weed-wacker” to Net Neutrality, thinks data caps represent innovation, opposes almost every consumer protection measure introduced by his predecessor Thomas Wheeler, and believes the best solution to improving broadband is to take pressure off companies like Comcast, AT&T, Charter, and Verizon.

Pai has been a commissioner at the FCC since 2012 where he and his fellow Republican Michael O’Rielly have strongly opposed most of Chairman Wheeler’s pro-competition agenda and broadband reforms:

• Pai and his chief of staff Matthew Berry vocally opposed efforts by Wheeler to monitor and manage providers’ implementation of data caps and zero rating schemes that exempt provider-preferred content from usage allowances or speed throttles. Pai said Wheeler’s inquiries to carriers regarding zero rating practices showed “the era of permissonless innovation is over,” followed by a Tweet from Mr. Berry complaining that, “If you come up with an innovative service, you will be hauled into FCC to explain yourself.” In 2012, Pai decried allowing Net Neutrality to take hold because it could lead to eventual regulation of usage-based pricing policies.
• Pai fiercely opposes Net Neutrality and told an audience at the conservative Free State Foundation in December he will remove “outdated and unnecessary regulations” and “fire up the weed-wacker and remove those rules that are holding back investment, innovation, and job creation.”
• In 2015, Pai cut and pasted large sections of AT&T’s website into a dissent over the FCC’s plan to fine the phone giant $100 million for deceiving customers about its “unlimited data” plan. Pai’s statement defended AT&T’s business practices and blamed consumers for not understanding AT&T’s definition of “unlimited.”
• Pai voted against the Charter – Time Warner Cable/Bright House Networks merger not because he opposed it. He was upset that Chairman Wheeler insisted on a seven-year ban on Charter implementing data caps. “Chairman Wheeler’s order isn’t about competition, competition, competition; it’s about regulation, regulation, regulation. It’s about imposing conditions that have nothing to do with the merits of this transaction. It’s about the government micromanaging the Internet economy,” said his spokesperson.
• Pai partly dissented from the AT&T buyout of DirecTV because he didn’t like the deal’s conditions mandating affordable internet access for consumers, marketplace protections for competing online video services, and a strongly empowered compliance officer assigned to make certain AT&T met its obligations — a lesson the FCC learned after Comcast was accused of skirting its obligations in its acquisition of NBCUniversal.
• Complained Comcast’s efforts to buy Time Warner Cable would be dead on arrival ‘because the Obama administration has shown itself much less likely to approve major telecom mergers — such as the blocked AT&T-T-Mobile merger — than a Republican administration might be.’
• Opposed Wheeler’s effort to force open the set-top box marketplace to competition so consumers can buy their own cable boxes at a lower cost.
• Called Wheeler’s push to have the minimum broadband speed standard reset to 25Mbps “incoherent,” claiming that 71 percent of consumers who can already buy access at those speeds don’t want or need it and that there was no need to push wired providers to deliver faster access because Verizon and AT&T already offer 4G LTE service to 98.5% of America.

Where your next FCC complaint will likely end up.

“Ajit Pai has been on the wrong side of just about every major issue that has come before the FCC during his tenure,” noted Craig Aaron, president of Free Press. “He’s never met a mega-merger he didn’t like or a public safeguard he didn’t try to undermine. He’s been an inveterate opponent of Net Neutrality, expanded broadband access for low-income families, broadband privacy, prison-phone justice, media diversity and more.”

In contrast, Comcast was thrilled with President Trump’s appointment.

“We commend [Pai’s] tireless efforts to develop and support policies that benefit American consumers and spur greater investment and innovation in broadband technologies to connect all Americans and drive job creation,” said David Cohen, senior executive vice president and chief diversity officer at Comcast. “This is a terrific appointment for the American consumer and the companies the FCC regulates and we look forward to continuing to work with Chairman Pai in his new role.”

That may not be too surprising, considering he spent his formative years in Washington as an associate general counsel at Verizon, where he helped the company deal with pesky regulatory matters. Pai has already given the public clues about how he is likely to respond to consumer complaints about the state of American broadband.

In January 2016, Pai complained the FCC should not be responding to the whims of public interest and consumer groups that “protest a particular [provider] offering,” referring to T-Mobile’s zero rating plan, claiming the “agency is going to jump to the tune” as a result. When the FCC starts scrutinizing providers over their “highly competitive and innovate service[s],” that represents the “very definition” of regulatory uncertainty.

For Pai, the ultimate sin seems to be bothering the incumbent telecom giants, who in his view seem to know what is best for America. So he is very likely to stay out of their way.

AT&T has gone over the top donating at least $70,000 to back Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, more than the company has ever donated to anyone else.

It isn’t by coincidence.

According to Communications Daily (subscription req’d), one of Ryan’s top priorities for 2017 is a possible complete rewrite of the Telecommunications Act — the nation’s most important federal law governing telecommunications regulation and the operations of the Federal Communications Commission. Ryan and many of his fellow Republicans have been critical of the FCC’s growing interest in consumer protection and industry oversight.

Ryan’s efforts to push for further deregulation and policies that could lead to further industry consolidation could generate a windfall in the billions for AT&T. Past revisions of the Act have radically transformed the telecom landscape in the United States. President Bill Clinton’s signature on the 1996 Telecommunications Act opened the door to a tsunami of cross-media ownership and radio/TV station consolidation. Provisions in the ’96 Act were promoted as bolstering competition, but critics argued consolidation was favored over competition.

Howard Zinn summarized the effects of the ’96 law in his book A People’s History of the United States: “[it] enabled the handful of corporations dominating the airwaves to expand their power further. Mergers enabled tighter control of information.” Adding to the criticism, Latin American writer Eduardo Galeano echoed: “Never have so many been held incommunicado by so few.”

In 2000 Consumers Union blasted the ’96 Act as legislative bait and switch.

Ryan

“It is evident that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has failed to produce the consumer benefits policy makers promised because competition has failed to take hold across the communications industry,” the group said. “The fundamental problem is that the huge companies that dominate the telephone and cable TV industries prefer mergers and acquisitions to competition.”

AT&T is reportedly interested in access to lawmakers to lobby for telecom reforms that will allow it to switch off its legacy copper wire phone network in rural America, force certain consumers to wireless-only landline service, get rid of Net Neutrality, allow more wireless industry consolidation, ban municipal broadband, have a louder voice on privacy and cybersecurity regulation, access to wireless spectrum, and preferably a de-fanged FCC.

Public Citizen government affairs lobbyist Craig Holman told Communications Daily AT&T’s contributions are a “fundamental way of gaining access and influence to policymakers,” as part of Washington’s “pay-to-play system.”

The only entity giving Ryan more money than AT&T was the deregulation-obsessed Koch Industries, which gave $75,000.

Ryan’s current chief of staff is a close friend to Big Telecom. David Hoppe lobbied for AT&T, USTelecom and Verizon before being hired by Ryan. Hoppe’s influence appears to be significant after Ryan introduced “A Better Way,” the GOP’s platform for what they will do if they keep control of Congress and win the White House. The plan makes it clear there is unhappiness with the FCC under the leadership of chairman Thomas Wheeler, opposition to Title II reclassification of broadband — a change that opened the door to enforcing Net Neutrality, and a belief the FCC lacks transparency and is living in the regulatory past.

Holman worries that lobbyist spending in Washington, already a problem, has become insane after Citizens United eliminated limits on campaign contributions.

“The lids have been blown off… it’s breathtaking,” Holman told the newsletter.