How Trump’s appointment of Brendan Carr as FCC chairman will affect enterprises

President-elect Donald Trump has announced Brendan Carr as the next head of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the organization responsible for setting the regulations governing telecoms, broadband, satellite communications and broadcasting in the US.

Unlike some of the executive appointments made by Trump in recent days, Carr is an experienced hand at the FCC, having served as a commissioner since 2017 after a period as an aide to Commissioner Ajit Pai before becoming the organization’s chief legal advisor.

He’s also got very strong opinions about where the FCC has been going wrong and where it might go in future. As Trump put it in his announcement of the appointment on Truth Social: “Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought against the regulatory Lawfare that has stifled Americans’ Freedoms, and held back our Economy. He will end the regulatory onslaught that has been crippling America’s job creators and innovators, and ensure that the FCC delivers for rural America.”

Reining in big tech

This is less about regulation per se than liking some regulations and interventions more than others. Reading Carr’s public statements as FCC commissioner — he also authored the new administration’s ‘Project 2025’ section on the FCC — a variety of attention-grabbing opinions stand out. He’s a critic of what he claims are attacks on free speech by big tech platforms. As he put it on X (formerly Twitter) last week in the same context, “the censorship cartel must be dismantled.”

An obvious counter to that view is that consumers can choose to go elsewhere if they dislike a platform’s content moderation policy. This, of course, includes Trump’s Truth Social or Musk’s Twitter, with the latter recently losing users to its smaller rival Bluesky, in part for precisely this reason.

His other positions include supporting a recent new law banning TikTok unless its Chinese parent sells the US business, and supporting the expansion of broadband access through Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellite network.

Black is white

One issue where Carr could leave his mark is the long-running battle over net neutrality. This issue has bounced around contentiously in the FCC ever since then-chairman Ajit Pai scrapped net neutrality regulations imposed during the Obama administration.

This was and still is hugely controversial. To simplify, net neutrality was meant to ensure that carriers didn’t prioritize traffic or investment in a way that might force customers to buy more expensive services. The Biden administration eventually restored net neutrality earlier this year by reclassifying broadband service to the more tightly regulated Title II status.

Given Carr’s longstanding statements that net neutrality simply gets in the way of market forces, it’s a certainty that he will back moves to reverse this. But given that true net neutrality is arguably long gone anyway it’s hard to see how this will change much for customers in terms of services, competition or pricing. What it might do is put the net neutrality issue beyond regulation so that reinstating it becomes a moot point in the face of market evolution.

Another more significant influence might end up being the FCC’s say on mergers and acquisitions in the telecoms and communications sectors. Where consolidation is allowed, this can have a major influence on the service choices on offer to enterprises.  

As law firm Perkins Coie noted in a recent analysis, “Generally, under Republican administrations, the FCC construes this public interest standard more narrowly and leniently. If past is prologue, the new Trump FCC will be more favorably predisposed to telecom and media consolidation.”

For the FCC, supposedly an independent body, this is new territory. The abrupt change is certain to fuel critics of Carr’s appointment and the more politicized, interventionist agenda he represents.

“No one is going to be surprised Trump has chosen Brendan Carr as FCC chair. He’s got all the necessary attributes: a willingness to say black is white and up is down whenever required and an aggressive confidence in the face of logic and precedent,” said Kieren McCarthy, executive director of the International Foundation for Online Responsibility.

According to McCarthy, Carr was hostile to some parts of big tech while unashamedly favoring others. The model for Carr would be his former boss, Ajit Pai

“Pai pulled Carr onto the FCC where the two of them tag-teamed a series of decisions that benefitted big telco over big tech, and often over the American citizen. We can expect more of the same for the next four years.”