FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION WASHINGTON OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN May 24, 2018 The Honorable Maxine Waters U.S. House of Representatives 2221 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Dear Congresswoman Waters: Thank you for your letter regarding the Restoring Internet Freedom Order, which reestablished the authority of the Federal Trade Commission to oversee the network management practices of Internet service providers while returning to the light-touch legal framework that governed such practices for almost twenty years. At the dawn of the commercial Internet in 1996, President Clinton and a Republican Congress agreed that it would be the policy of the United States "to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet... unfettered by Federal or State reguIation" This bipartisan policy worked. Encouraged by light-touch regulation, the private sector invested over $1.5 trillion to build fixed and mobile networks throughout the United States. Innovators and entrepreneurs grew startups into global giants. America's Internet economy became the envy of the world. Then, in early 2015, the FCC jettisoned this successful, bipartisan approach to the Internet and decided to subject the Internet to utility-style regulation designed in the 1930s to govern Ma Bell. This decision was a mistake. For one thing, there was no problem to solve. The Internet wasn't broken in 2015. We weren't living in a digital dystopia. To the contrary, the Internet had been a stunning success. Not only was there no problem, this solution" hasn't worked. The main complaint consumers have about the Internet is not and has never been that their Internet service provider is blocking access to content. It's that they don't have access at all or enough competition between providers. The 2015 regulations have taken us in the opposite direction from these consumer preferences. Under Title II, annual investment in high-speed networks declined by billions of dollars-the first time that such investment has gone down outside of a recession in the Internet era. And our recent Broadband Deployment Report shows that the pace of both fixed and mobile broadband deployment declined dramatically in the two years following the Title II Order. Returning to the legal framework that governed the Internet from President Clinton's pronouncement in 1996 until 2015 is not going to destroy the Internet. It is not going to end the internet as we know it. It is not going to undermine the free exchange of ideas or the fundamental truth that the Internet is the greatest free market success story of our lifetimes. Page 2-The Honorable Maxine Waters By returning to the light-touch Title I framework, we are helping consumers and promoting competition. Broadband providers will have stronger incentives to build networks, especially in unserved areas, and to upgrade networks to gigabit speeds and 5G. This means there will be more competition among broadband providers. It also means more ways that companies of all kinds and sizes can deliver applications and content to more users. In short, it's a freer and more open Internet. The Restoring Internet Freedom Order also promotes more robust transparency among ISPs than existed three years ago. It requires ISPs to disclose a variety of business practices, and the failure to do so subjects them to enforcement action. This transparency rule will ensure that consumers know what they're buying and that startups get information they need as they develop new products and services. Moreover, we reestablish the Federal Trade Commission's authority to ensure that consumers and competition are protected. Two years ago, the Title II Order stripped the FTC of its jurisdiction over broadband providers by deeming them all Title II "common carriers." But now we are putting our nation's premier consumer protection cop back on the beat. Despite any suggestion that the public comment process was somehow "flawed" or "tampered with" by the alleged submission of comments under false names, any such activity did not affect the Commission's actual decision-making--that is, the agency's ability to review the record, respond to comments that raised significant issues, and make a reasoned judgment. I am not aware of any evidence to the contrary. Indeed, any reasonable review of the Order would demonstrate precisely the opposite-that the Commission painstakingly engaged with the voluminous public record in this proceeding (namely, the many substantive comments that meaningfully grappled with the policy issues raised in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) in reaching its conclusions. To the extent you are concerned with non-substantive comments submitted under multiple different names that stated simply that the commenter supported or was opposed to the Title II classification without substantive explanation, as you can see in the Order, the agency did not rely on or cite any such comments. The Commission is staunchly committed to transparency and integrity in rulemaking proceedings, including in connection with the Restoring Internet Freedom proceeding. To that end, when individuals contacted the Commission to complain that a comment was falsely filed in their name, the Commission responded by inviting them to file a statement to that effect in the public record. In addition, as noted above, members of the public had an opportunity to comment on the substance of the public draft released three weeks prior to the scheduled vote, pursuant to my transparency initiative. In sum, Americans will still be able to access the websites they want to visit. They will still be able to enjoy the services they want to enjoy. There will still be regulation and regulators guarding a free and open Internet. This is the way things were prior to 2015, and this is the way they will be in the future. Page 3-The Honorable Maxine Waters I appreciate your interest in this matter. Your views are important and will be entered into the record of the proceeding. Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance. Sincerely, Ajit V. Pai