FCC commissioner calls Biden equity plan for internet control 'sweeping, unprecedented, and unlawful'

[Geee]

Washington Examiner

Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr is calling the Biden administration's "digital equity" plan for all internet services and infrastructure an "unlawful power grab."

"President Biden’s plan hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the country. Never before, in the roughly 40-year history of the public Internet, has the FCC (or any federal agency for that matter) claimed this degree of control over it. Indeed, President Biden’s plan calls for the FCC to apply a far-reaching set of government controls that the agency has not applied to any technology in the modern era, including Title II common carriers," Carr said in a statement on Monday.

Carr previewed an important FCC vote next week on Nov. 15 about whether to implement the president's plan.

 

"Congress never contemplated the sweeping regulatory regime that President Biden asked the FCC to adopt—let alone authorized the agency to implement it," he said.

 

Carr explained that the Biden administration's "broadband policies are failing" and the "costs of building Internet infrastructure in this country have skyrocketed" due to his economic policies. While the FCC has been looking to expand "new, 5G services," it has "needlessly blocked and delayed new broadband infrastructure builds" because of "regulatory red tape."

The commissioner said President Joe Biden has chosen to blame "the private sector and free market capitalism itself for the Administration’s own policy shortfalls" and is pushing the FCC to adopt "a one-page section of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Infrastructure Act)," which has "new rules of breathtaking scope, all in the name of 'digital equity.'"