Ajit Pai

Ajit Varadaraj Pai (; born January 10, 1973) is an American lawyer who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from 2017 to 2021. He became a partner at the private-equity firm Searchlight Capital in April 2021. He became the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of CTIA on April 1, 2025.

The son of Konkani Indian immigrants to the United States, Pai grew up in Parsons, Kansas. He is a graduate of both Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School. He worked as a lawyer in various offices of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, with a two-year stint as an in-house lawyer for Verizon Communications. He joined the FCC as a lawyer in its Office of General Counsel in 2007. He was nominated to be a commissioner in 2011 by President Barack Obama, who followed tradition in preserving balance on the commission by accepting the recommendation of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He was confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate on May 7, 2012, and was sworn in on May 14, 2012, for a five-year term.

In January 2017, newly inaugurated president Donald Trump designated Pai as FCC chairman. He is the first Indian American to hold the office. In March 2017, Trump announced that he would renominate Pai to serve another five-year term (remaining Chairman of the FCC). Pai was confirmed by the U.S. Senate for an additional five-year term on October 2, 2017. Pai is a proponent of repealing net neutrality in the United States and, on December 14, 2017, voted with the majority of the FCC to reverse the decision to regulate the internet under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Pai resigned on January 20, 2021, the day of Joe Biden's inauguration as President of the United States.

Early life and education

Pai was born on January 10, 1973, in Buffalo, New York. His father, Varadaraj Pai, and his mother, Radha Pai, immigrated to the United States from India in 1971. His father was a urologist and his mother was an anesthesiologist. He is of Konkani descent.

Pai grew up in Parsons, Kansas, where his parents worked at the county hospital. After graduating from Parsons Senior High School in 1990, Pai studied social studies at Harvard University, where he was a member of the Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society. He graduated from Harvard in 1994 with an B.A. with honors. He then attended the University of Chicago Law School, where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and won a Mulroy Prize for excellence in evidence law. He graduated with a J.D. in 1997.

Career

After law school, Pai clerked for Judge Martin Leach-Cross Feldman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana from 1997 to 1998. Pai then worked for the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice 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. Pai was then designated chairman of the FCC by President Donald Trump in January 2017 for a five-year term. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate for the additional five-year term on October 2, 2017.

In 2019, he was named forty-seventh among the 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare by Modern Healthcare. He resigned from his post on 20 January 2021, following the inauguration of Joe Biden as President of the United States.

In April 2025, he became president and CEO of wireless industry lobby group CTIA.

Policy positions

Pai was an advocate for less regulation during his tenure on the FCC. He was seen as a closer ally to broadcasters than to 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 at Carnegie Mellon University on July 18, 2012. 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. Pai 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.

In October 2014, Pai wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post criticizing a government-funded research project named Truthy at Indiana University which was studying the spread of "false and misleading ideas, hate speech and subversive propaganda" online. Pai questioned the value of the project, writing, "should taxpayer money be used to monitor your speech and evaluate your 'partisanship'?" Truthy researchers defended the project, writing, "we do not monitor individual people. The tweets we analyze are public and accessible by anyone." Indiana University issued a press release which said "the Truthy project is a basic computing research project designed to provide analytical insight into the ways in which information is spread across social media networks such as Twitter." U.S. House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith sent a letter to the National Science Foundation announcing a review of the grant.

In 2017, Pai removed from circulation a proposal introduced by Tom Wheeler which would have required cable providers to make their programming available on third-party devices.

In June 2019, the FCC under Pai allowed telecommunications companies to automatically sign up their users in call-blocking services. The measure was proposed by Pai, who said that it would reduce "unwanted robocalls". In response, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel argued that the FCC should go further in mandating free call-blocking services.

In July 2020, the FCC under Pai approved the creation of a new number 9-8-8, for the hotline for suicide prevention; the old hotline was numbered 1-800-273-8255, while the new hotline came into effect in July 2022.