F.C.C. Invokes Internet Freedom While Trying to Kill It

Here we go again. The Federal Communications Commission, now led by an anti-regulation ideologue appointed by President Trump, wants to gut the net neutrality rules that keep powerful broadband companies from calling the shots on the internet, at the expense of consumers.

Under the cynical guise of “restoring internet freedom,” the new F.C.C. chairman, Ajit Pai, wants to give big telecom companies carte blanche to treat the content of their subsidiaries and partners more favorably than information from other companies — a practice that AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are already starting to employ. They would also be able to demand fees from companies like Netflix and YouTube to deliver videos and other content to customers.

If the commission, which has a 2-to-1 Republican majority, approves Mr. Pai’s proposal, there will be little stopping the broadband industry from squelching competition, limiting consumer choice and raising prices. The previous F.C.C. chairman, Tom Wheeler, helped put the rules Mr. Pai is attacking in place in 2015, and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld them last year.

Mr. Pai argues that existing regulations are hurting the internet. He said that the 12 largest internet service providers reduced investment by 5.6 percent between 2014 and 2016 because the net neutrality rules were too onerous. But he is cherry-picking data to make his case. Free Press, a public-interest group that supports net neutrality, found that total investment by publicly traded broadband companies increased 5.3 percent between 2013-14 and 2015-16.

Large telecommunications companies have been raking in profits in recent years. And they have been making multibillion-dollar acquisitions — not something you see from an industry that is withering from senseless regulations. Charter spent more than $65 billion last year to buy Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. AT&T bought DirecTV for $48.5 billion in 2015 and is trying to buy Time Warner, the media company, for $85 billion.

Not only is Mr. Pai’s lament for the broadband industry based on alternative facts, it misses the bigger point. Net neutrality is meant to benefit the internet and the economy broadly, not just the broadband industry. That means the commission ought to consider the impact the regulations have on consumers and businesses. In particular, the commission has a responsibility to protect people with few or no choices; most Americans have access to just one or two companies for residential service and just four big operators for wireless.