Biden’s Inauguration Raises Questions of New Leadership at Communications and Trade Commissions

January 20, 2021 – President Joe Biden’s inauguration Wednesday will usher in a wave of new faces at the helm of many federal agencies, including the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission.

Following through on an announcement made last November, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai stepped down from his post Wednesday.

Pai’s last day at the FCC was preceded by one of his last actions as Chairman. On Tuesday, Pai declared in the FCC’s 14^th annual broadband deployment report that the agency will continue to maintain its six year-old benchmark definition of “broadband” as 25 Megabit per second (Mbps) download speeds and 3 Mbps upload speeds.

The report concludes that the loosely-regulated telecom industry is doing enough to extend reliable broadband access to all Americans, despite FCC Democrats largely disagreeing with the claim.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, who may well be named the acting chair or chair at the agency, has repeatedly argued that the FCC should adopt a higher-speed definition of broadband service. “With so many of our nation’s providers rolling out gigabit service, it’s time for the FCC to adjust its baseline upward, too,” Rosenworcel said last year, calling for new speed benchmarks requiring 100 Mbps download speeds and an upload standard higher than 3 Mbps.

Rosenworcel’s nomination for Chair is backed by the Communications Workers Union of America and the National Education Association.

Although Commissioner Geoffrey Starks has been backed by racial justice groups in the guessing game for next chairman, but having joined the Commission in 2019, he is junior to Rosenworcel. Color of Change, a civil rights advocacy group in the U.S., said it supports Starks for the role, given his advocacy for achieving racial economic equity through tech, specifically in Black communities in the past.

Transitions at the Federal Trade Commission

At the Federal Trade Commission, Chairman Joseph Simons said Tuesday he and members of his senior staff would resign on January 29. Simons offered no reason for the date of his departure. As with the FCC, the president names the chairman of independent agencies like the FTC.

FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018 to fill an open Democratic seat, has since been nominated by Biden to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The remaining commissioners will include Democrat Rebecca Slaughter and Republicans Noah Phillips and Christine Wilson, meaning that there is room for two democrats at the agency.

The interagency transitions come as advocacy groups, led by Public Citizen, sent a letter to the FTC saying the steps required to cancel Amazon Prime “are designed to unfairly and deceptively undermine the will of the consumer,” and may violate FTC rules as well as other consumer protection laws.

Amazon’s market power is already the subject of a lengthy congressional antitrust investigation, as well as probes by the FTC, European Commission, and other regulators. The letter used a complaint from Norway’s consumer protection agency, which on Thursday asked Norwegian regulators to determine whether Amazon violated local law.