Infrastructure Investment After Title II

This paper looks at changes in capital spending beginning in 2015 relative to a counterfactual rooted in the investment analysis conducted by the FCC in the 2018 Restoring Internet Freedom Order. The analysis shows that while the decline in capital spending in 2015 and 2016 stopped in 2017, investment in the telecommunications sector is materially compressed, being about $10-to-$13 billion (or 12-to-15%) below expectations in 2017 with nearly $24-to-$30 billion in investment lost to the Title II drama since 2015