Pai Touts Permissionless Innovation Such as in Copper-IP Switch
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said private investment unleashed from regulation is the best way to promote broadband deployment. "The free market, not bureaucracy, should pick winners and losers," he said at the Resurgent conference in Austin. "In the absence of…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
heavy-handed regulation, private-sector broadband providers invested over $1.5 trillion in networks over the course of 20 years." The FCC had rules "demanding that companies maintain their fading copper networks," he said. "Every dollar that a company spends propping up copper is a dollar that can’t be spent building a next-generation, IP-based network. We voted to get rid of these perverse rules, enabling investment in the networks of the past to be used on the networks of the future." He concluded, "Whenever a technological innovation creates uncertainty, some will always have the knee-jerk reaction to presume it’s bad. They’ll demand that we do whatever’s necessary to maintain the status quo. Strangle it with a study. Call for a commission. Bemoan those supposedly left behind. Stipulate absolute certainty. Regulate new services with the paradigms of old. But we should resist that temptation. 'Guilty until proven innocent' is not a recipe for innovation ... History tells us that it is not preemptive regulation, but permissionless innovation made possible by competitive free markets that best guarantees consumer welfare."