The FCC’s Republican telecom shill Ajit Pai is lying about the overwhelming public opposition to his plans on destroying the net neutrality protections during a vote on December 14. He and his crew are working diligently to further the digital disenfranchisement of millions of Americans who depend on an open internet with utility-like subsidize to bridge the “digital divide.” In fact, literally every single thing that Ajit Pai has said to defend any and all of his big business moves since taking the chairmanship of the FCC over, have been lies. Maybe Ajit Pai isn’t lying? Maybe Ajit Pai is just stupid and doesn’t understand basic concepts of math. As Business Insider points out, Pai’s recent arguments for why we need to get rid of net neutrality protections is to “free up” investments that are being hindered by the protections.
But there’s no evidence to prove Pai’s argument. In fact, the data that Pai points to doesn’t show anything close to a marked decrease in broadband investment. Instead, it shows that while broadband investment has risen and fallen a little bit over the years, it has been mostly flat since 2013.
And that’s if you believe the data Pai cites. A study in May by the consumer advocacy group Free Press, which opposes repealing the rules, reported that broadband investment had increased since 2015.
And the data the Free Press uses is all publicly put out by the big telecoms supporting Pai and his band of swamp creature Republicans. As TechDirt has explained in too many articles, summaries, and studies to link to, there has never been even a smidgen of evidence supporting Pai and the flaming telecom bag of horse manure he’s trying to sell the American public. Citing one of the newer studies by Deutsche Bank Markets Research, in an article titled “AT&T, Verizon to lead U.S. fiber spending charge, but Altice and Comcast are gaining ground, says analyst” we see exactly how investments have done the exact opposite of what Ajit Pai claims.
“Telecoms have become much more public signaling their intent to increase fiber investment, with AT&T and Verizon leading the spending ramp,” said Deutsche Bank Markets Research.
After establishing its “One Fiber” initiative, Verizon signed two key fiber supply deals: it will spend $1 billion with Corning to buy 1.5 million miles of fiber over three years and a $300 million deal with Prysmian to buy 1 million miles of fiber over 3 years.
Their research goes on to show that AT&T, Century Link, Comcast, and others have all been investing and promising faster speeds, and all have been ramping those investments up for some time now. Ajit Pai works for money and that money has pictures of Verizon on it.
