US President Donald Trump has picked Indian-American Ajit Pai, a fierce critic of the Obama-era “net neutrality” rules, as the chief regulator of the nation’s airwaves and internet connections.
Ajit Pai will head the crucial Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the federal authority regulating radio, television, phone, cellphone spectrum and services, internet and satellite and cable in the United States.
Ajit Pai had opposed online privacy regulations that forced 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.
Ajit Pai’s parents are doctors by profession who immigrated to US from India. Ajit Pai is a lawyer and he has served with the government, Congress and the private sector.
Pai had been one of the two Republican commissioners on a five-member FCC panel that regulates the country’s communications infrastructure, including TV, phone and internet service.
FCC is currently headed by Thomas Wheeler, a nominee of the Democratic Party.
Ajit Pai has long maintained that the FCC under 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 speech delivered in December last year, Pai 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.
Thanking President Trump for choosing him as the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Ajit Pai tweeted, “there is so much we can do together to bring the benefits of the digital age to all Americans and to promote innovation and investment.”
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