Free market meets net neutrality

Coverage Type: 

These days, it’s uncommon to see a Republican arguing in favor of the Federal Communications Commission’s open internet rules, more commonly known as net neutrality, a set of regulations passed during the Obama administration that are now on the chopping block in the new Republican-controlled FCC. Chip Pickering, CEO of the telecommunications trade group Incompas and a former GOP congressman from Mississippi, who still considers himself a fiscal conservative, sees net neutrality as the “last great battle” in competition policy. “I think the open internet has been the most successful expansion of free-market capitalism in world history,” he said. You would be hard pressed to find a sitting Republican who shares his view on the FCC rules. In the past 10 years, his party has become all but united in its opposition to what it sees as Obama-era regulatory overreach. “He’s maintained those principles,” said Gigi Sohn, who was an adviser to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, the architect of the current net neutrality rules. “He hasn’t sold out like many of his colleagues.”


Free market meets net neutrality