Former Verizon lawyer, and general muppet, Ajit Pai is trying to pass off a blatant lie in order to justify the FCC attempts to repeal Net Neutrality. Pai as head of the FCC has been the subject has been the subject of a lot of scorn and backlash, and he seems to want to earn every bit of it, as he continues be an insufferable example of one of the many things wrong with the Trump presidency.
The FCC recently released a report that amounts to “See? We restored all the magical innovation and progress to American ISPs!”, the report itself is a review of deployment commitments and related data concerning deployment of broadband internet service.
But the FCC’s actual data—based on the extensive Form 477 data submissions Internet service providers must make on a regular basis—only covers broadband deployments through December 2016. Pai wasn’t elevated from commissioner to chairman until January 2017, and he didn’t lead the vote to repeal the net neutrality rules until December 2017.
AT&T, Verizon, Frontier, Alaska Communications and more are named in the report, and three out of the four major deployments examined were planned during the Obama administration.
And this glaring flaw would be enough to sink Pai’s claims even without mentioning all the scumbaggery and collusion between big ISPs and the American government in their attempts to royally screw your rights. Like when they conspired to allow ISPs to do whatever they want with your data.
But setting all that aside, let’s get back to the issue at hand.
Luckily, at least some legislators are calling out the FCC:
“This report concludes that in the United States the deployment of broadband to all Americans is reasonable and timely. This is ridiculous—and irresponsible. Today there are 24 million Americans without access to broadband. There are 19 million Americans in rural areas who lack the ability to access high-speed services at home. There are 12 million school-aged children who are falling into the Homework Gap because they do not have the broadband at home they need for nightly schoolwork. Ask any one of them if they think the deployment of the most essential digital age infrastructure is reasonable and timely and you will get a resounding ‘No’. To call these numbers a testament to our national success is insulting and not credible,” Democratic commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said (PDF) in response to the report.
The simple fact of the matter is that the aftershocks of a Net Neutrality repeal, much like those from a tax overhaul, haven’t been felt yet. But at least we can expect the FCC and mega-corporations to continue to be lying scumbags.
