Quotes from Ajit Pai

I'm a lawyer by training, of course.

Without having to ask anyone's permission, innovators everywhere used the Internet's open platform to start companies that have transformed how billions of people live and work.

Infrastructure investment is critical to closing the digital divide in our country and bringing high-speed Internet access to more rural Americans.

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.

I believe that the FCC and Tribal Nations share the same goal-ensuring high-speed Internet access to anyone who wants it, while respecting and preserving sites with historic, religious, and cultural significance to Tribes.

Regulatory mandates have a disproportionate effect on small businesses.

To realize the promise of 5G, we will need smart networks, not dumb pipes. Dumb pipes won't deliver smart cities. Dumb pipes won't enable millions of connected, self-driving cars to navigate the roads safely at the same time.

Gigabit Opportunity Zones would enable Americans to become participants in, rather than spectators of, the digital economy. They would be a powerful solution to the digital divide. I hope our elected officials will give the idea serious consideration.

Hyperbolic headlines always attract more attention than mundane truths.

The federal government has no business spending your hard-earned money on a project to monitor political speech on Twitter.

Overly restrictive regulations not only stifle the private sector; they also ultimately hurt consumers.

Bottom line: government shouldn't be a bottleneck for entrepreneurs looking to design a better mousetrap.

In the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the government called for an Internet 'unfettered by Federal or State regulation.' The result of that fateful decision was the greatest free-market success story in history.

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.

Protecting consumers goes beyond just fighting illicit schemes. It also involves making sure that they get what they pay for. Unfortunately, rural telephone customers aren't always assured of that.

Entrepreneurs are constantly developing new technologies and services. But too often, they're unable to bring them quickly to market for consumers because regulatory inertia stands in the way. Unfortunately, the FCC can suffer from this government-wide problem.

The FCC, under my leadership, will stand for the First Amendment.

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.

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.

The scourge of unlawful robocalls is technically complex to address, and no single action will get the job done.

Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.

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.

No one seriously believes that unlocking a cellphone to switch carriers is equivalent to piracy.

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.