Net neutrality critic Ajit Pai elevated to FCC chairman, reports say

By Ed Oswald Published January 22, 2017

President Donald Trump is expected to name current Republican FCC commissioner Ajit Pai to the agency’s top job, sources told Politico on Friday. Pai would be able to assume the role of chairman immediately after appointment as he was already confirmed by the senate as a Barack Obama appointee in May 2012.

Pai is a strong opponent of net neutrality and seems like a logical appointment given the Trump administration’s need to fill at least 690 cabinet and sub-cabinet level positions requiring congressional approval. His opinions also seem to jive well with Trump’s stated desire to roll back Obama-era regulations that he believes hurts businesses.

Recommended Videos

Neither Pai nor Trump’s representatives are commenting on the report. However, Pai was widely seen as a top choice for the job. While Pai won’t need confirmation now — good news considering as little as 10 percent of appointments needed confirmation have been made as of Friday according to reports — he will need reconfirmation by the end of 2017 to continue to serve. His current term ends this year.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Pai’s elevation to chairman still leaves a Republican seat open, which Trump will need to fill. There, it is less clear who Trump may choose. One bright note for net neutrality supporters, Trump’s FCC transition team isn’t uniformly opposed to net neutrality.

Republic Wireless co-founder David Morken was appointed to the transition team in December and had previously said that “traditional Republican telecom policy” had too often favored bigger companies at the expense of smaller businesses.

However, Morken’s position is not widely held among those working with Trump on the FCC — so the chances of another anti-net neutrality appointee are fairly high. Regardless of what happens, net neutrality advocates are already sounding the alarm bells over Pai.

“Pai has been an effective obstructionist who looks out for the corporate interests he used to represent in the private sector,” Free Press president and CEO Craig Aaron said in a statement. “If the new president really wanted an FCC chairman who’d stand up against the runaway media consolidation that Trump himself decried in the AT&T/Time Warner deal, Pai would have been his last choice — though corporate lobbyists across the capital are probably thrilled.”

Topics

Contributor

For fifteen years, Ed has written about the latest and greatest in gadgets and technology trends. At Digital Trends, he's…

Mobile

PayPal vs. Venmo vs. Cash App vs. Apple Cash: which app should you use?

PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, and Apple Wallet apps on an iPhone.

We’re getting closer every day to an entirely cashless society. While some folks may still carry around a few bucks for emergencies, electronic payments are accepted nearly everywhere, and as mobile wallets expand, even traditional credit and debit cards are starting to fall by the wayside.

That means many of us are past the days of tossing a few bills onto the table to pay our share of a restaurant tab or slipping our pal a couple of bucks to help them out. Now, even those things are more easily doable from our smartphones than our physical wallets.

Computing

How to change margins in Google Docs

Laptop Working from Home

When you create a document in Google Docs, you may need to adjust the space between the edge of the page and the content -- the margins. For instance, many professors have requirements for the margin sizes you must use for college papers.

You can easily change the left, right, top, and bottom margins in Google Docs and have a few different ways to do it.

Computing

What is Microsoft Teams? How to use the collaboration app

A close-up of someone using Microsoft Teams on a laptop for a videoconference.

Online team collaboration is the new norm as companies spread their workforce across the globe. Gone are the days of primarily relying on group emails, as teams can now work together in real time using an instant chat-style interface, no matter where they are.

Using Microsoft Teams affords video conferencing, real-time discussions, document sharing and editing, and more for companies and corporations. It's one of many collaboration tools designed to bring company workers together in an online space. It’s not designed for communicating with family and friends, but for colleagues and clients.