Federal Communications Chairman Ajit Pai Wednesday cheered a federal court's ruling upholding the Trump administration's decision to pull back from Obama-era net neutrality laws, even though the court ruled against the agency's banning states from passing their own laws.
"I'm very excited for what that means for consumers," Pai told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" about the Tuesday ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia."Since we made that decision, speeds are up on average year over year. Infrastructure is up. Millions more Americans are getting access to the internet. The Trump administration fought about regulation, the FCC has followed and I'm glad the Court of Appeals agreed to that."
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the agency must also the key aspects of its 2017 repeal of net neutrality.
"Back in 2015 the Obama (administration) imposed heavy-hitting utility-style rules, on the Internet, treating the internet like a slow-moving utility such as Amtrak and the like," Pai explained. "We said, no we want the internet to move fast, and infrastructure investments, and we want the markets to determine how this technology develops."
Also on Wednesday, Pai said he couldn't comment directly on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's prediction of a court fight if Sen. Elizabeth Warren becomes president and tries to break up his company, but noted that such "Silicon Valley net giants" had wanted net neutrality regulations against rival companies.
"What I can say is a lot of these Silicon Valley net giants were telling Washington to impose these so-called net neutrality regulations on other companies and it's hard to say that one sector of the economy isn't transparent if you are not being transparent yourself," he said.