STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER AJIT PAI
APPROVING IN PART AND CONCURRING IN PART
Re: Inquiry Concerning the Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to All
Americans in a Reasonable and Timely Fashion, and Possible Steps to Accelerate Such
Deployment Pursuant to Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as Amended by the
Broadband Data Improvement Act, GN Docket No. 16-245.
Today, we start the clock on our annual inquiry “concerning the availability of advanced 
telecommunications capability to all Americans.”
1
  I approve this Notice to the extent that it meets the 
requirements of section 706 of the Telecommunications Act.
But, as in previous years, this proceeding promises to play out like a 1970s television show: a 
predictable script that meets a preordained goal.  There will, of course, be some drama.  Will the 
Commission adopt a definitive benchmark for mobile broadband?  Will the Commission add latency, 
jitter, or packet loss to the definition of broadband?  Will the Commission acknowledge that the Universal 
Service Fund is spending billions of dollars to build out services that don’t qualify as broadband?  But 
everyone knows the denouement:  Early next year, the FCC will find that broadband is not being 
deployed “in a reasonable and timely fashion.”
2
This sham is a shame.  We should treat this proceeding as an annual status report on our efforts to 
promote digital infrastructure.  The statute requires us—the government—to “encourage [broadband] 
deployment on a reasonable and timely basis . . . to all Americans” using a variety of regulatory tools.
3
  
And so we should be asking, what has the FCC done to encourage broadband deployment?  What barriers 
to infrastructure investment have we removed?  How have we reformed price cap regulation?  How have 
we exercised regulatory forbearance?  What measures have we taken to promote competition in the local 
telecommunications market?  What have state commissions done that we can learn from?  And focusing 
on the future, what should the FCC be doing?  What barriers to investment can be eliminated?  What 
regulatory obstacles stand in the way of investment, innovation, and entrepreneurship and how can we get 
rid of them?
We don’t need more lip service to the “stark discrepancy” between broadband in rural and urban 
America—we’ve said that all before.
4
  Instead, we need concerted action to make good on the promise of 
universal service once and for all.  And given how long rural Americans have waited already, we need it 
soon.
For all these reasons, I approve in part and concur in part.
                                                     
1
Telecommunications Act § 706(b).
2
Id.
3
Telecommunications Act § 706(a).
4
Notice at para. 16; see also Inquiry Concerning the Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Capability to All 
Americans in a Reasonable and Timely Fashion, and Possible Steps to Accelerate Such Deployment Pursuant to 
Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as Amended by the Broadband Data Improvement Act, GN 
Docket No. 15–191, Eleventh Annual Broadband Progress Notice of Inquiry, 31 FCC Rcd 8823, 8824, para. 2 
(2015) (discussing the 2015 Report’s finding of a “digital divide” between rural and urban deployment).