Reading 09: Ajit Pai ❤s ISPs
The man pictured above, Ajit Pai, is a former Verizon Communication lawyer who now works as the Chairman of the FCC, an organization built to protect the best interests of the American consumer.
From the picture, Pai just looks like the fun-loving guy in the office who loves the idea of his over-sized novelty mug. To the American consumer, however, Pai is anything but fun.
Ajit Pai is well known to be very anti-regulation and also pro-merger. After becoming FCC Chairman, he made it exceedingly clear that he specifically wanted to do away with net neutrality regulations — and managed to repeal them this past summer.
So what is net neutrality and why should the average American consumer care?
Essentially, net neutrality ensures that all data on the internet is treated equally. As is illustrated by this Open Internet advocacy site, net neutrality regulations prevent ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T from treating some websites and services differently than others. Without such protections, ISPs could provide the fastest service for only those companies that pay, while slowing down all other services.
There are plenty of arguments for retaining these protections of net neutrality, but the most important and broad is that it protects the consumer. Ultimately, without the proper regulations on ISPs under net neutrality, the already monopolistic telecom conglomerates would be entrusted with more freedom and power. With a few exceptions, the history of the free market has proven that monopolies do not benefit consumers.
Without the protections of net neutrality regulations, ISPs are free to engage in practices such as throttling, blocking, and paid prioritization. This leads to the possibility of all sorts of damaging behaviors from some of the most hated companies in the United States. Fast lanes and slow lanes could be created that would only allow those with the proper financial influence to experience the quick speeds of modern networking technology, while everyone else is left in the dust using the slow lanes of the internet. Thus, allowing the wealth gap of the United States to spread to the online world as well.
Furthermore, ISPs would have the ability to create bundles of internet services and charge a premium for their use. While at the same time, they could even partner up with some companies and allow their services to be used for free, while charging for the use of others. Essentially, ISPs would have the power to pick winners and losers in multiple different industries, while burying online startups in the market before they even have the chance to compete.
On the other hand, arguments against net neutrality tend to center mainly on the idea that the enforcement of net neutrality rules cause telecoms to reduce innovation and investment in infrastructure. In fact, this is the central argument Ajit Pai makes when discussing how net neutrality is in fact a negative. However, numerous executives and upper management employees at some of the country’s largest telecoms have been quoted saying net neutrality has not limited their investments in infrastructure.
The fight is not over. Ajit Pai has won in the short term, but we as internet users and US citizens can fight back and restore the proper regulations to force telecoms to consider us, the customers. We should fight to put the proper people in office in order to restore the powers to the FCC to regulate ISPs and promote net neutrality.
We need to make sure that ISPs put the customer first (somewhat at least, let’s be realistic) because while Ajit Pai may love ISPs, the American customer does not.
