He says contradictory things. He says he supports an idea but doesn't support the act of enforcing it. His apparent ideology is in direct conflict with his actions. He either fundamentally misunderstands the situation, is majorly corrupt, or is simply malicious (which I doubt).
I support the idea of being faithful in your marriage, but I'm 100% opposed to the federal government enforcing this. How is that contradictory?
The problem is, there isn't another place for the regulation to happen. The FTC simply does not have the expertise or resources and the internet needs broad conforming rules to perform well, so a state-by-state solution would prove disastrous.
When you give a private entity the right to trample on individual rights, the individual's rights are weakened.
Even in the 1990s it was obvious that the copper network was obsolete and any additional money put into it would be a wasted investment.
> Comcast sued the Electric Power Board in TN a few years later to keep them from offering Fibre to the home
Chairman Pai specifically speaks about FCC initiatives to increase competition including opening up access to utility poles. It's a difficult issue because many utility poles/corridors are locally or municipally owned and the FCC has no jurisdiction there.
> Even if he says Title II isn't the right framework, why gut it until it's replaced.
The point is that it doesn't need to be replaced. It's a heavy-handed and unnecessary imposition of federal regulation on a market that needs to be as free and open as possible due to the speed of innovation in the tech space.
I'm generally amenable to the argument that robust competition is the best solution and that we should be aiming to reduce those barriers but... unbundling was very unpopular with the ISPs and didn't really work and is dead, and as you said the big last-mile problems are local.
Knowing that the FCC isn't actually successfully creating the robust competitive local broadband markets they say they'd prefer, doesn't it make sense for them to do what they _are_ able to do and keep the existing (already "light touch") regulations?
This is nonsense. Because of the capital investment involved there are few "startups" in the ISP space. If there's technological innovation happening it's not filtering down to the consumer in the form of lower prices.
Here in Canada the effective price of LTE access per GB has continuously gone up in the face of "innovation" on how to structure billing for optimal revenue generation. Meanwhile Canadian ISPs fight any regulation that would help foreign entrants into the space with tooth and nail.
I'd be all for the "free and open" solution if we take it to its logical conclusion - that means franchise agreements, single-provider-multi-dwelling building agreements, and so on all become null and void at the same time.
He talks about the "light touch" framework of the Bill Clinton era, which saw telecos profit immensely and never feed any money back into their system. I've know Comcast line who, back in the early 2000s, would tell me they'd take parts to their shop where people would resolder and reconstruct equipment that no one in the world manufactured anymore instead of just upgrading the lines.
Comcast sued the Electric Power Board in TN a few years later to keep them from offering Fibre to the home; a service that provided amazing speed at about the exact same cost.
He brings up AOL CDs versus Gigabit fibre, not talking about all the companies that are keeping that from happening.
There is still a bunch of dark fibre that hasn't been used. Telecos are still charging insane amounts for mobile bandwidth that's nowhere near saturated.
None of this stuff even touches network neutrality, which is simply saying "You pay for x quality of service and you get x quality of service, to everyone. We don't add a faster pipe just for Google. We don't throttle Netflix and give priority to YouTube. We won't throttle VoIP so you buy our VoIP service instead. Equal access, to the best of ability and equipment."
Even if he says Title II isn't the right framework, why gut it until it's replaced. If you say "we'll get rid of it and replace it," more likely than not they'll just git rid of it and telecos will do the same bullshit they've always done and run with it.
I think he's in the pocket of big teleco and is weaselling around giving them more power.