Fact-checking Mignon Clyburn’s net neutrality statement

[Commentary] This blog reviews some specious claims made in Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Mignon Clyburn's statement on network neutrality.

Commissioner Clyburn also claims that broadband providers are now allowed to interfere in the communications of consumers and content providers. This was not allowed before 2015 and is not allowed today. Clyburn waxes a tale of doom because the rules she favored were reversed. But she fails to acknowledge the harms suffered for the two years under the 2015 rules, notably an increase in the digital divide because plans for networks were delayed or canceled in marginal locations with vulnerable people, the constituencies Clyburn claims to represent. Clyburn does not want people to suffer, so why she willingly supports a harmful policy can only be explained by politics.

[Rosyln Layton was a member of the Trump FCC transition team, and is visiting researcher at Aalborg University Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies and a vice president at Strand Consult, both in Denmark.]