Trump Formally Picks Net Neutrality Opponents to Guide FCC

President-elect Donald Trump this week formally made his selections to guide the FCC transition, and both are vehement opponents of net neutrality specifically and the FCC's role as a broadband consumer watchdog generally. Jeff Eisenach and former Sprint lobbyist Mark Jamison were formally named by Trump's transition team to oversee hiring and policy for the FCC. As noted previously, Eisenach is a think-tanker with long-standing ties to broadband companies. Eisenach isn't just in control of selecting the new FCC boss, he's apparently also in the running for the position.

Both Eisenach and Jamison played significant roles in trying to shoot down the net neutrality rules passed by the FCC last year.

Eisenach has been both a consultant for Verizon and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a deregulatory think tank that takes significant funding from the nation's biggest ISPs.

"Net neutrality would not improve consumer welfare or protect the public interest," Eisenach testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee in 2014. In an AEI blog post, Eisenach declared net neutrality to be "crony capitalism pure and simple."

Consumers disagree. With limited broadband competition and ISP's enjoying often comedic control over state legislatures, there's no organic market forces in place that keep ISPs on their best behavior when it comes to abusing their duopoly over the last mile. That's precisely why US consumers not only pay more for broadband than most developed countries, but also experience some of the worst customer service in any sector in America.

Both Eisenach and Jamison have consistently and repeatedly stated that they'd like to strip back the FCC's authority over broadband providers. That would not only put net neutrality at risk, but would also likely involve rolling back the FCC's recently passed consumer privacy protections. Those rules require that ISPs must be transparent with consumers and provide working opt out tools so users can chose not to have their data collected and sold.

Despite the fact that net neutrality generally has broad, bipartisan consumer support, Trump has repeatedly indicated he opposes the concept, a position that runs in contrast to his "populist" campaign rhetoric.