As the FCC tries to justify its blatant handout to the broadband industry, one of the common refrains is that the rules must be repealed because they hurt broadband investment. Of course we've noted repeatedly how this is patently false. That's not an opinion. SEC filings, earnings reports, and on the record statements by numerous CEOs to investors (who by law they can't lie to) have made it clear that net neutrality -- and the reclassification of ISPs under Title II -- had absolutely no ill-effect on industry investment.
The fact that this is a lie doesn't appear to bother the FCC (or the countless others that perpetuate it) in the slightest, but it does speak to their credibility as the repeal of the rules looms this Thursday.
The agency was back again this week, issuing a press release (pdf) claiming that FCC boss Ajit Pai "held a series of telephone calls with small Internet service providers across the country--from Oklahoma to Ohio, from Montana to Minnesota." These executives, Pai claims, informed him that the FCC's modest (by international or any other standard) net neutrality rules "harmed their businesses."
"One constant theme I heard was how Title II had slowed investment and injected regulatory uncertainty into their business plans," claimed Pai. "In short, heavy-handed regulation is making it harder for smaller providers to close the digital divide in rural America. By lightening the regulatory burden from Washington, we will unleash providers to do what they do best: serve their communities and provide broadband access to residents across the country."
One problem: 30 small ISPs (and around 1000 startups) are already on record saying they support keeping the rules intact. The other problem: the FCC provided absolutely no data to support this claim, and when consumer advocates took a look at these ISPs' data, they found that deployment actually increased during the time the rules existed.
For example, data from one of the ISPs Pai cited, AirLink Internet Services in Oklahoma, indicated that the ISP "more than doubled the number of rural Census blocks in which it offered service after the adoption of the [February] 2015 decision it criticizes," said Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood. The ISP actually went from serving 1,482 rural Census blocks at year end 2014 -- to more than 3,000 rural blocks by the middle of 2016, Wood noted. Airlink also expanded in urban Census blocks as well, bumping coverage "from 4,251 such blocks to 7,108--an increase of more than 67 percent."
Not a single one of the five ISPs cited by Pai provided a shred of data "measuring the amount by which their investments or deployments had declined." |
Wood's analysis found similar growth at three of the other four ISPs cited by Pai.
Complaints from Ajit Pai and these specifically-selected ISPs was "rife with such vague statements and outright errors," Wood wrote, but lacked any substantive "dollar signs, deployment data, [or] any other quantifiable metric demonstrating the supposed impact of Title II. Perhaps this is because there is no quantifiable harm from Title II, only the anecdotes that these carriers provide when called upon by the Chairman," Wood added.
Not a single one of the five ISPs cited by Pai provided a shred of data "measuring the amount by which their investments or deployments had declined," he said. "One might have supposed they'd be eager to offer such data, especially to a Chairman who so often congratulates himself on his alleged fondness for rigorous cost-benefit analysis, and on his rumored demand for real economic proof. But the filings are silent on the subject."
Of course this wholesale manufacture of patently-false data to support an extremely unpopular decision to gut the rules (one survey stated that 83% of Americans oppose the FCC's plan) is par for the course at Donald Trump and Ajit Pai's FCC. And, like so many other FCC behaviors in recent months, will provide interesting fodder in the net neutrality lawsuits to come.