Net neutrality rules and Title II common carrier regulation were supposed to derail investment in the broadband industry. The Federal Communications Commission's new rules took effect in June despite the protest of Internet service providers and Republicans in Congress, who are still fighting the new regime in courts of law and public opinion.

Republicans held a hearing just two days ago to discuss how common carrier regulation will inevitably cause investment to decline, while some net neutrality opponents argue that the rules have already caused a drop in investment.

But in the quarter ending September 30, a three-month period that occurred entirely after the FCC's rules took effect, Comcast's latest earnings report says that its "capital expenditures increased 11.0 percent to $2.2 billion" over the same period the previous year.

Although the rules took effect in June, they were voted on in February. It was clear that change was coming back in November 2014 when President Obama urged the FCC to apply common carrier rules to ISPs. If the rules destroyed the case for network investment, ISPs had this entire year to prepare before they were finalized.

Yet in the nine months ending September 30, Comcast said its "capital expenditures increased 12.8 percent to $5.9 billion compared to the prior year." The Q3 increases are primarily due to "increased spending on customer premise equipment related to the deployment of the X1 platform and wireless gateways and our ongoing investment to expand business services," Comcast said.

Comcast is also dramatically upgrading Internet speeds with a new 2Gbps fiber service and gigabit cable service.

It's probably too early to say for sure whether investment will be harmed or helped by net neutrality. But Comcast's spending isn't the only evidence suggesting that there haven't been immediate ill effects.

Time Warner Cable, the nation's second biggest cable company after Comcast, reported today that its capital expenditures increased to $3.5 billion in the first nine months of 2015 due to efforts "to improve network reliability, upgrade older customer premise equipment and expand its network to additional residences, commercial buildings and cell towers."

TWC capital expenses remained steady at $1.1 billion in the third quarter, about the same as the previous year. But the nine-month total of $3.5 billion was up from $3.18 billion the prior year, an increase of 10.1 percent.

Wireless investment up at Verizon; T-Mobile continues LTE upgrades

The FCC's order reclassified both fixed and mobile broadband providers as common carriers while imposing bans on blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.

The new classification hasn't slowed mobile investment at Verizon, which is preparing for an upgrade to 5G and reported that its wireless capital investment is "$8.5 billion year to date, up 8.4 percent from a year ago." The increase was even more striking when comparing Q3 2014 to Q3 2015, with wireless capital spending going up 17.6 percent from $2.48 billion to $2.92 billion.

Verizon said it also "invested approximately $22 billion in spectrum licenses and capital for future network capacity" over the past nine months.

Capital investment isn't increasing throughout the industry, but even in cases of flat spending, there doesn't seem to be a clear link to net neutrality.

T-Mobile US said its Q3 capital expenditures "were $1.1 billion, down from $1.2 billion in the second quarter of 2015 and flat compared to $1.1 billion in the third quarter of 2014." But T-Mobile is still in building mode, boasting that it will cover 300 million Americans with LTE by year-end. T-Mobile also says it has more money than it needs to buy spectrum at a major auction next year.

Although Verizon's wireless spending is up, its wireline capital expenditures dropped from $1.46 billion in last year's third quarter to $1.2 billion in this year's third quarter. Wireline capital spending was $3.41 billion in the last nine months, down from $4.19 billion in the same period the previous year. However, this is a continuation of trends that pre-dated Obama's call for stronger broadband rules. Verizon decided to start winding down its copper-to-fiber upgrades more than five years ago.

AT&T's capital expenditures were $5.3 billion in the third quarter, up from $5.2 billion year-over-year. AT&T's capital expenses of $13.9 billion in the first nine months of the year were down from $17 billion the previous year.

But AT&T already decided to reduce investment before Obama's call for heavier regulation, because it had largely completed a two-year, $14 billion upgrade of its wireless and wireline networks known as Project Velocity IP. Months before the FCC's net neutrality decision, AT&T was already saying it planned to bring capital spending as a percent of total revenues back down to its historical capital spending levels.

Even so, AT&T has been expanding its gigabit fiber service this year and had enough money to complete a $48.5 billion purchase of DirecTV. AT&T had claimed during the net neutrality debate that it had "paused consideration of any [additional] fiber investments" because of Obama's proposal.

Sprint, which has been struggling, is scheduled to report its latest quarterly results on Tuesday.

Republicans still predict investment declines

While net neutrality opponents warned of potential losses in investment in the months ahead of the FCC's vote, companies including Sprint and Verizon occasionally went off script, admitting that the rules wouldn't really harm investment.

ISPs are suing to overturn the rules, and the House Communications and Technology subcommittee held a hearing Tuesday on the supposed negative impacts on investment. Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) claimed that because of the FCC's rules, there is now "less incentive for any company to invest in new and innovative service offerings."

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) predicted that the expanded regulation will cause "depressed investment, fewer jobs, [and] reduced innovation."

The committee invited a few opponents of the FCC's rules to testify, but it also allowed NYU Business Professor Nicholas Economides to make the opposing case. Economides said that "economic models give mixed results on the impact of a network neutrality regulation on the incentive of ISPs to invest more," with some results suggesting that ISPs will invest less and others suggesting that ISPs would invest more.

"Therefore one cannot claim that network neutrality should result in lower investment by ISPs," he said. "It is equally possible that network neutrality will prompt ISPs to invest more."

Economic policy consultant Robert Shapiro, founder of Sonecon, called the FCC's common carrier regulation "a solution in search of a problem." He also said ISPs will face costs complying with the new rules. While Shapiro argued that the FCC decision will likely "negatively affect ISP investment," he acknowledged that this isn't certain yet.

Regulation generally reduces investment, he said, but "in assessing whether that would happen in this case, however, we cannot proceed directly, because it hasn’t happened yet."