This is a good story by @crobmatthews at @MarketWatch, but what I wish it had made a little more space to explain is (1) ISPs are thriving now, but (2) they were also thriving under Obama, and (3) their fortunes now have NOTHING to do with @AjitPaiFCC's #NetNeutrality repeal. https://twitter.com/crobmatthews/status/1339306225184493570

The piece quotes me (accurately to be sure) on the fact that ISPs' broadband business has been #pandemic proof, as they keep signing up new customers for this essential service. But the lead-in there implies that they are thriving under (and due to) Pai's rules. Not true.

And it cites me (accurately again) on how the only bad ISP results of late are due to stupid bets like AT&T's purchase of DIRECTV - a deal we opposed as wasteful at the time, because AT&T was looking to buy content and competitors instead of investing in its network.

Ironically enough though, that stupid merger (that helped oust the old CEO) is indeed key to Pai's tenure. He opposed the merger commitments AT&T made, cuz corporate freedom; but @ATTPublicPolicy commitments fueled the growth in fiber for which Pai now falsely claims credit.

But I digress. Here's the point: there's some cackling from Pai's small group of academically dishonest lackeys - former conservatives & libertarians who traded any credibility to gain support from Pizzagate proponents and worse - about how #NetNeutrality 's repeal had no impact.

As the @crobmatthews story explains, there are reasons we haven't seen tectonic shifts in ISPs' business models (state #NetNeutrality laws, merger conditions). But liars like Pai & @BrendanCarrFCC made their own claims too: that repealing #TitleII would boost ISP investment.

And as @freepress has explained too many times now even for me to keep count, investment (and ISPs' stock prices too, while we're at it) did NOT go down in 2015 and 2016 under #TitleII. Just the opposite. Investments went up. https://www.freepress.net/our-response/expert-analysis/insights-opinions/raw-data-reveal-reality-title-ii-and-neutrality

Whereas, since Pai's supposedly "freedom restoring" repeal, ISP investments have gone down every year. On aggregate, and also for several of the country's largest ISPs individually. #TitleII https://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/2020-09/free_press_2020_section_706_inquiry_comments.pdf

So in the first year of Pai's tenure, but before his repeal vote in December 2017, ISPs invested ALMOST as much as in 2015 when the prior FCC rightly restored #TitleII. They have gone down every year since (as ISPs fire workers and pocket tax breaks too). https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/01/att-slashed-billions-from-network-spending-cut-tens-of-thousands-of-jobs/

Is any of this Pai's fault? Not exactly. As we've also explained, these ISP investment decisions are made years in advance, justified to investors in painstaking detail. They don't depend on FCC pronouncements like this, and aggregate investment is a dumb metric (that Pai chose).

But Pai himself, and his underlings and industry cheerleaders and Hill enablers too, make the claim that investment has gone UP when in fact it has gone DOWN. And for some reason, almost no one thinks to ask him about this or challenge his obvious lies.

(Oh, but speeds went up under Pai! Yeah, but slower than they had improved under the last administration. And remember too that the fiber deployments Pai wants credit for were planned BEFORE he became chair -- spurred in large part by AT&T by commitments Pai himself OPPOSED.)

(Oh, but prices have gone down under Pai, thanks to his magic deregulatory approach! Again, not true. We'll show soon how telecom lobbies lie with statistics - bad ones, at that - but in fact prices trended up not down, thanks to things like Pai approving a #TMobileSprint merger.