President Donald Trump has reportedly picked Ajit Pai, a son of Indian immigrants and a fierce critic of the Obama-era “net neutrality” rules to be chief regulator of the nation’s airwaves and internet connections.

Citing unidentified people, Bloomberg and Politico both reported Friday that the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission will be Ajit Pai, an old hand at the agency. Pai’s chief of staff, Matthew Berry, declined to comment. Neither Trump administration spokesman Bryan Lanza nor FCC spokesmen immediately replied to requests for comment.

Pai is one of the two Republican commissioners on a 5-member panel that regulates the country’s communications infrastructure, including TV, phone and internet service.

The Republicans’ FCC majority would help them roll back pro-consumer policies that upset many phone and cable industry groups, including net neutrality rules that bar internet service providers from favoring some websites and apps over others.

Bio: Who is Ajit Pai?

Ajit Pai is the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission. He was nominated to the FCC by President Barack Obama and was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on May 7, 2012.

Regulatory Philosophy

Commissioner Pai’s regulatory philosophy is informed by a few simple principles. Rules that reflect these principles will result in more innovation, more investment, better products and services, lower prices, more job creation, and faster economic growth.

  • Consumers benefit most from competition, not preemptive regulation. Free markets have delivered more value to American consumers than highly regulated ones.
  • No regulatory system should indulge arbitrage; regulators should be skeptical of pleas to regulate rivals, dispense favors, or otherwise afford special treatment.
  • Particularly given how rapidly the communications sector is changing, the FCC should do everything it can to ensure that its rules reflect the realities of the current marketplace and basic principles of economics.
  • As a creature of Congress, the FCC must respect the law as set forth by the legislature.
  • The FCC is at its best when it proceeds on the basis of consensus; good communications policy knows no partisan affiliation.

Stances on selected Issues

  • Broadband

Broadband is critical in modern American life. Especially when it comes to innovation, the Internet has leveled the playing field. It’s created a phenomenon that Commissioner Pai calls the “democratization of entrepreneurship.” With a good idea and a broadband connection, entrepreneurs anywhere can compete in ways unthinkable a generation ago.

Yet too many Americans still don’t have broadband. They are left on the other side of the “digital divide.” Commissioner Pai has seen this for himself, from Barrow, Alaska to Fayetteville, West Virginia.

That’s why he has proposed a comprehensive plan to promote broadband deployment to all Americans. The federal government must make it easier to for broadband providers to retire increasingly obsolete copper lines in favor of next-generation technologies like fiber. It must enable rural residents to have the same choice for stand-alone broadband typically found in cities. It must create a roadmap for state and local governments so that companies that want to compete in the broadband market don’t have to jump through unnecessary regulatory hoops in order to lay fiber to consumers.  It must promote common-sense policies like “Dig Once” and reform pole attachment rules to reduce the costs of building digital networks. It must streamline the process for deploying wireless infrastructure, from big towers to small cells.  It must free up more licensed spectrum for use by wireless carriers and more unlicensed spectrum for things like Wi-Fi. And it must preserve Internet freedom here and abroad, so that the online world can flourish free from heavy-handed government intervention.

  • First Amendment

Commissioner Pai has been an outspoken defender of First Amendment freedoms. When the FCC proposed to send researchers into newsrooms to question why reporters cover some stories and not others, Commissioner Pai sounded the alarm. Soon after, the FCC canceled the study. Commissioner Pai has also spoken out about threats to free speech here and abroad and has warned against government efforts to regulate the marketplace of ideas.

  • Public Safety

Public safety is a top priority for Commissioner Pai. He took action to ensure that consumers can reach emergency services whenever they dial 911. He has also called on the FCC to help law enforcement combat the rising threat posed by contraband cellphones in our jails and prisons. And he’s pushed for the advancement of Next Generation 911, an Internet-based system which will help keep Americans safe.

  • Fiscal Responsibility

Commissioner Pai has fought to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs. He was the first commissioner to demand an end to corporate welfare in a recent major spectrum auction; the agency ultimately agreed, saving taxpayers over $3 billion. He has been outspoken against the waste, fraud, and abuse in the Lifeline program, leading an investigation into the issue. And he wants to make sure that every federal program under the FCC’s purview gets the most bang for the buck.

  • Taking the Initiative and Getting Results

In addition to the accomplishments mentioned above, Commissioner Pai was the first member of the FCC in over two decades to call for revitalizing the AM radio band; the basic reforms he proposed were adopted in 2015. He also urged the FCC to create a task force to study the “Internet Protocol Transition” and report on obsolete rules that could be repealed; that task force was created. He proposed a way for the FCC to address petitions filed by the public much more quickly; that “rocket docket” is now in place and has dramatically sped up the agency’s decision-making. With respect to outside review and oversight, in at least half a dozen high-profile cases in which he dissented, federal courts of appeals have upheld his position. And in other such cases, one or both Houses of Congress has passed legislation consistent with his position.

Biography:

  • Jenner & Block, LLP. Partner, 2011 – 2012
  • Federal Communications Commission. Deputy General Counsel, Associate General Counsel, and Special Advisor to the General Counsel, 2007 – 2011
  • U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Chief Counsel, Chairman Sam Brownback, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights, 2005-2007
  • U.S. Department of Justice. Senior Counsel, Office of Legal Policy, 2004 – 2005
  • U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Deputy Chief Counsel, Chairman Jeff Sessions, Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Court, 2003-2004
  • Verizon Communications Inc. Associate General Counsel, 2001 – 2003
  • U.S. Department of Justice. Trial Attorney (Attorney General’s Honors Program), Antitrust Division, Telecommunications Task Force, 1998 – 2001
  • Hon. Martin L.C. Feldman, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Law Clerk, 1997 – 1998

Commissioner Pai graduated with honors from Harvard University in 1994 and from the University of Chicago Law School in 1997, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and won the Thomas R. Mulroy Prize. In 2010, Pai was one of 55 individuals nationwide chosen for the 2011 Marshall Memorial Fellowship, a leadership development initiative of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The son of immigrants from India, Commissioner Pai grew up in Parsons, Kansas. He now lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife, Janine; son, Alexander; and daughter, Annabelle.

Source: FCC

Pai has long maintained that the FCC under former chairman Thomas Wheeler had overstepped its bounds, suggesting that he would steer the agency in a direction more favorable to big phone and cable companies. In a December speech, he expressed confidence that the 2015 net neutrality rules would be undone and said the FCC needed to take a “weed whacker” to what he considered unnecessary regulations that hold back investment and innovation.

Consumer advocates have been concerned that a deregulation-minded FCC could potentially allow more huge mergers, overturn new protections for internet users and lead to higher costs for media and technology companies that rely on the internet to reach consumers.

Pai opposed online privacy regulations that force broadband providers to ask consumers for permission before using their data, saying they are more onerous than the requirements for internet companies like Google and Facebook.

He voted against approving Charter Communication’s $67 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable and a smaller company, Bright House — not because he opposed the merger, but because he thought some of the conditions required by the FCC, like barring data caps on home internet service, amounted to government meddling in business.

PAI VS. THE ZERO RATING

Pai also criticized an FCC report on “zero rating” earlier this month, characterizing it as a meaningless document that won’t influence the FCC under Trump. The report, issued in the last days of the Obama administration, took issue with the way companies like AT&T and Verizon exempted their own video services from wireless data caps, effectively making them cheaper to stream on phones and tablets than rival services such as Netflix.

Future big media and telecom mergers may get a friendlier review under a Pai-led FCC. Pai voted to approve AT&T’s 2015 acquisition of DirecTV. And while he told the Wall Street Journal in December 2013 that the Obama administration was likely to oppose Comcast’s failed effort to acquire Time Warner Cable — he was right — he added that a Republican administration would be more likely to approve it.

The FCC currently has a 2-1 Republican majority and two empty seats, which will be filled by one Republican and one Democrat.

Pai, an Indian-American from Kansas, has been an FCC commissioner since 2012. During his roughly 15 years in government, he’s been a Senate staffer and worked at the FCC and the Justice Department. He was also a lawyer for Verizon and an attorney at the law firm Jenner & Block.