Ajit Varadaraj Pai

Ajit Varadaraj Pai (born January 10, 1973) is the Chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), appointed by President Donald Trump in the earliest days of that administration. He is the first Indian American to hold the office. He was initially nominated for a Republican Party position on the commission by President Barack Obama at the recommendation of Mitch McConnell. He was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on May 7, 2012, and was sworn in on May 14, 2012, for a term that concludes on June 30, 2016 (though he may stay on until 2017 even if not reconfirmed). Pai previously worked as a lawyer for Verizon Communications.

Early life and education

The son of immigrants from India, Pai was born on January 10, 1973 in Buffalo, New York. He grew up in rural Parsons, Kansas. Both of his parents were doctors at the county hospital.

Pai attended Harvard University where he participated in the Harvard Speech & Parliamentary Debate Society. He earned a B.A. with honors in Social Studies from Harvard in 1994 and a J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1997, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and won the Thomas J. Mulroy Prize.

Career

Following law school, Pai clerked for Martin Leach-Cross Feldman of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. After moving to Washington, DC in 1998, Pai worked for the United States Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division as an Honors Program trial attorney on the Telecommunications Task Force. There, he worked on proposed mergers and acquisitions and on novel requests for regulatory relief following the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Pai left his Department of Justice post in February 2001 to serve as Associate General Counsel at Verizon Communications Inc., where he handled competition matters, regulatory issues, and counseling of business units on broadband initiatives.

Pai left Verizon in April 2003 and was hired as Deputy Chief Counsel to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts. He returned to the Department of Justice to serve as Senior Counsel in the Office of Legal Policy in May 2004. He held that position until February 2005, when he was hired as Chief Counsel to the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Property Rights.

Between 2007 and 2011, Pai held several positions in the FCC's Office of General Counsel, serving most prominently as Deputy General Counsel. In this role, he had supervisory responsibility over several dozen lawyers in the Administrative Law Division and worked on a wide variety of regulatory and transactional matters involving the wireless, wireline, cable, Internet, media, and satellite industries. In 2010, Pai was one of 55 individuals nationwide chosen for the 2011 Marshall Memorial Fellowship, a leadership development initiative of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Pai returned to the private sector in April 2011, working in the Washington, D.C. office of law firm Jenner & Block where he was a Partner in the Communications Practice.

In 2011, Pai was then nominated for a Republican Party position on the Federal Communications Commission by President Barack Obama at the recommendation of Minority leader Mitch McConnell. He was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on May 7, 2012 and was sworn in on May 14, 2012 for a term that concluded on June 30, 2016.

Policy positions

Pai has been an advocate for less regulation during his tenure on the FCC, emphasizing in testimony before Congress that "The Internet is the greatest example of free-market innovation in history.". In addition, Pai is seen as a closer ally to broadcasters than other members of the FCC. In testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology on July 10, 2012, he warned about the dangers of regulatory uncertainty and the need for the FCC to keep pace with the dynamic communications sector. Pai also asserted that by reforming the way the Commission works, the agency can facilitate the provision of new and better services at lower prices for American consumers.

Pai gave his first major speech since taking office on July 18, 2012 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. There, he discussed how the FCC can help promote economic growth and enhance job creation in the information and communications technology field by adhering to three basic principles: (1) the FCC should be as nimble as the industry it oversees; (2) the FCC should prioritize the removal of regulatory barriers to infrastructure investment; and (3) the FCC should accelerate its efforts to allocate additional spectrum for mobile broadband. Specifically, he called for a reinvigoration of Section 7 of the Communications Act, which gives the Commission a one-year deadline to review proposals for new technologies and services. He introduced the idea of creating an IP Transition Task Force to expedite the country’s transition to all-IP networks. He urged the commission to settle the nine-year-old contributions reform proceeding for the Universal Service Fund by the end of the year. Finally, he advocated for completing the rules for the AWS-4 spectrum band by September 2012 and conducting the broadcast spectrum incentive auctions by June 30, 2014.

Pai wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in 2014 criticizing a proposed FCC study of the news-gathering practices of media organizations. In another 2014 letter, Pai criticized Netflix, writing that their Open Connect caching tools effectively secure fast lanes for its traffic.

Net neutrality

Pai is opposed to the FCC's current incarnation of net neutrality and voted against reclassifying internet service providers as Title II Common Carriers. He actively opposed the February 2015 vote of the FCC to enact net neutrality regulations, calling them a "dangerous" assault on the "culture of the First Amendment."

Prison inmate telephone calling costs

Pai voted to oppose imposing caps on the rates private companies charge for interstate inmate phone calls in 2013, arguing instead for a simpler rate limit. In 2015, Pai opposed rate caps on in-state inmate calls, claiming it would not solve the problem of inmates' contraband cell phones.

Lifeline Program

Pai in 2016 called for the Universal Service Administrative Company to investigate the possibility of fraud among beneficiaries of the agency's "Lifeline" subsidy for telephone service, contending that "apparent duplicates" who had signed up for the program improperly received $476 million annually.

Personal life

Pai lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife and two children.