Mr. Pai spoke at a news conference on Thursday after pushing through more rollbacks of Obama-era regulations. Appointed by President Trump in January, Mr. Pai has been on a deregulation charge. He has abolished a proposal to open the cable box market and frozen a program for broadband subsidies for low-income households. On Thursday, he passed two actions that will ease pricing restrictions on telecom giants and give broadcast television companies greater latitude to bulk up through mergers.
Mr. Pai’s biggest targets are net neutrality and the classification of broadband like a utility. He has the broad support of Republican lawmakers and is expected to introduce a plan that would weaken aspects of the net neutrality rules as soon as this month.
Mr. Pai said on Thursday that he wanted to overturn the declaration of broadband as a utility-like service, which puts stricter rules on broadband providers, akin to what phone services face today.
