In the United States, the government has no business entering the marketplace of ideas to establish an arbiter of what is false, misleading, or a political smear.
Some claim that the Obama FCC's regulations are necessary to protect Internet openness. History proves this assertion false. We had a free and open Internet prior to 2015, and we will have a free and open Internet once these regulations are repealed.
You may never need them, but if you do, they'll be there. It's that bedrock promise of protection that makes our public safety officials the unsung heroes that they are.
I've talked a lot about the need to promote digital empowerment: to enable any American who wants high-speed Internet access, or broadband, to get it.
It's vital that low-income Americans have access to communications services, including broadband Internet, which Lifeline helps to achieve.
Broadband Internet access shouldn't depend on who you are or where you're from.
High-speed Internet access, or broadband, is giving entrepreneurs anywhere an unprecedented chance to disrupt entire industries and transform our country.
To bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans, the FCC needs to make it easier for companies to build and expand broadband networks. We need to reduce the cost of broadband deployment, and we need to eliminate unnecessary rules that slow down or deter deployment.
Increasingly, meeting the connectivity needs of all Americans - no matter where you live - means freeing up spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless broadband.
Broadband Internet access service is inherently an interstate service, and that is not a determination that just the FCC has made.
Forty-six years after my parents' journey from India, here I am, the grandson of a spare auto parts salesman and a file clerk, tapped by the President of the United States to be the nation's chief communications regulator.
Beginning in the Clinton administration, there was, for nearly two decades, a broad bipartisan consensus that the best Internet policy was light-touch regulation - rules that promoted competition and kept the Internet 'unfettered by federal or state regulation.' Under this policy, a free and open Internet flourished.
Next-generation networks are hard to build. It takes a lot of money and effort to lay fiber, install wireless infrastructure, build satellite earth stations, and more. It also requires a reasonably certain business case for deployment, which is all too often hard to prove in parts of the country with sparse population and/or lower incomes.
Spoofed robocalls are often used by fraudsters to lure consumers into scams and avoid detection.
Regulatory mandates have a disproportionate effect on small businesses.
Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria each caused billions of dollars in damage, claimed the lives of many Americans, and disrupted millions more. They also reminded us how important communications networks can be during emergencies - and that the FCC has a role to play in helping keep people safe.
I'll never forget the first time I heard Johann Sebastian Bach's 'Partita in E Major' for violin. It was in a late-1980s television commercial, of all things. As a young violinist at the time, it enchanted me - it was so pure, precise, and unadorned.
We need to create a level regulatory playing field. It makes no sense for Internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter to be allowed to buy newspapers while a small AM radio station is prohibited from purchasing its local paper.
Consumers fare best when the barriers to business entry are low, which helps ensure that the market - any market - becomes competitive and stays that way.
As a native of Parsons, Kansas, a small town near the Oklahoma border, I have a deep respect for tribal nations in Oklahoma. But this federal spending in Oklahoma is outrageous. And excessive subsidies have made the state a playground for Lifeline fraud.
