From the letter:
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Gigi Sohn for A Proactive, Consumer-Focused Federal Communications Commission
On January 3, 2023, President Joe Biden renominated Gigi Sohn to fill the fifth seat at the FCC. The five-member commission has been deadlocked at 2-2 since the departure of former FCC Chair Ajit Pai in January 2021. The agency has a tremendous amount of work before it, and leaving it less than fully operational limits its capacity to most effectively and proactively:
- Finish updating the FCC’s broadband maps to ensure equitable allocation of the billions of dollars appropriated by Congress in the bipartisan infrastructure law;
- Restore the agency’s authority to regulate broadband under Title II of the Communications Act and restore Net Neutrality protections;
- Strengthen Lifeline and the ACP, programs created to ensure low-income people can afford communications services;
- Create rules to ensure our nation’s communications networks are more reliable and resilient to natural disasters, the climate crisis, and other threats;
- Combat “junk fees” that plague consumer internet and phone bills and successfully implement the broadband nutrition label to ensure telecom consumers avoid surprise fees and understand what they’re paying for;
- Create robust rules to combat digital discrimination that leave low-income neighborhoods and communities of color with subpar internet service;
- Halt monopolization within the broadcast and telecommunications sectors.
The Senate must provide the FCC with a governing majority by confirming Sohn without delay.
Background
- Sohn has more than 30 years of experience working on communications policy, and she has a demonstrated track-record of bringing together varied stakeholders in bipartisan coalitions to fight for equitable broadband policy, consumer protections, competition and the open internet. Her experience would make her an asset at the agency as it works to implement the mandates of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
- She served as a top aide to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. During her time at the agency, the FCC adopted the only Net Neutrality rules that have withstood legal challenges to their statutory authority, modernized the Lifeline program, adopted strong privacy rules for broadband providers and more.
- Sohn helped found and lead a non-profit focused on promoting an open and competitive communications and technology market.
- Since her initial nomination in 2021, Sohn has been the subject of a bigoted and vicious smear campaign that has resulted in a historic delay in her confirmation. This has been to the benefit of telecommunications firms, broadcasters and other entities regulated by the agency and to the detriment to working families trying to pay rising monthly bills and those in Black, Indigenous, Latinx and rural communities that the biggest phone and cable companies have long exploited and neglected.