There is no need for the Federal Communications Commission to take any action to reimpose so-called “Title II” public utility-like net neutrality regulation on Internet service providers. Such heavy-handed regulation was eliminated by the agency’s December 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom Order (RIF Order). Since then, there has been no meaningful evidence of consumer or competitive harm attributable to the agency’s deregulatory action.
Nevertheless, it’s likely that once a newly reconstituted FCC secures a 3-2 Democratic majority, whoever chairs the agency at the time will “feel” compelled to propose reinstituting some form of public utility regulatory regime, if only for the sake of repudiating the RIF Order adopted under Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s leadership. This despite the evidence that, since the RIF Order’sadoption, there’s been a measurable increase in broadband investment by Internet service providers which enables more ubiquitous, more robust, and higher bandwidth networks redounding to the benefit of America’s consumers.
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