Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai sounded like a different person while speaking at the American Enterprise Institute on Friday from the one who delivered a blistering attack on open internet regulations at the Newseum just two weeks ago.

Pai, who glossed over his plan to scrap rules banning internet providers from discriminating against or in favor of legal sites, never mentioned his opposition to now-dead privacy regulations that would have barred ISPs from selling your browsing history to advertisers without your permission.

Instead, the chairman talked about other initiatives including expanding broadband internet access to underserved areas of the country, improving over-the-air TV signals and other issues that could improve your connected life.

Expanding broadband

in his speech, Pai touted the FCC’s recent decisions to support rural broadband expansion, saying: “Every American who wants to participate in our digital economy should be able to do so.”

Since January, the commission has voted to spend $4.53 billion over the next decade on the Mobility Fund Phase II, a project to support expanding LTE coverage. It will also put almost $2 billion into the Connect America Fund Phase II, which will back deployments of wired connections with downloads of at least 10 megabits per second.

Pai’s predecessor Tom Wheeler had tried to get the Mobile Fund money in motion last year.

But like Wheeler, Pai has fewer tools at his disposal to get providers to barge into each others’ established markets, and Friday’s speech showed it.

He pledged action by the FCC to ease carriers’ access to existing poles and conduits — something FCC chairs have been saying for almost a decade. In a brief Q&A session, Pai added that action by Congress would help. Unfortunately, Congress has been neglecting this issue for about as long.

Pai also touted efforts to lower regulatory-paperwork burdens that he said, citing a February estimate by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, totaled almost $800 million a year.

“Do we want that money to be diverted to lawyers and accountants, figuring out how to comply with the FCC’s regulatory requirements?” Pai asked. “Or do we want it spent delivering American consumers better, and faster, and cheaper internet access?”

But broadband investment hit $75 billion in 2015, per the trade group U.S. Telecom. Making companies fill out fewer forms is good in principle but won’t make much difference here.

Lastly, Pai noted FCC action to ease the road to 5G wireless, which he said in a Q&A portion would be “essentially comparable” to wired broadband. What he didn’t say is that you’ll have to wait until 2020 or so to find out.