Media Contact: 
Tina Pelkey, (202) 418-0536
tina.pelkey@fcc.gov

For Immediate Release

STATEMENT ON BILL TO RE-IMPOSE HEAVY-HANDED REGULATION OF THE INTERNET

WASHINGTON, March 6, 2019—Tina Pelkey, spokeswoman for Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, issued the following statement today regarding the introduction of a bill by Congressional Democrats that would reverse the FCC’s successful policy of encouraging Internet growth and freedom under the Restoring Internet Freedom Order:   

“The FCC’s return in 2017 to the bipartisan, light-touch approach to Internet regulation has been a success. This time-tested framework has preserved the free and open Internet.  It has promoted transparency in order to better inform consumer choice.  It has unleashed private investment, resulting in more fiber being deployed in 2018 than any year before and download speeds increasing by an astounding 36%.  And it has proven wrong the many hysterical predictions of doom from 2017, most notably the fantasy that market-based regulation would bring about ‘the end of the Internet as we know it.’  The Internet in America today is free and vibrant, and the main thing it needs to be saved from is heavy-handed regulation from the 1930s.”

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This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action.  Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action.  See MCI v. FCC, 515 F.2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).