In the months leading up to the FCC assault on net neutrality, big telecom and FCC boss Ajit Pai told anybody who’d listen that killing net neutrality would boost broadband industry investment, spark job creation, and drive broadband into underserved areas at an unprecedented rate. As it turns out, none of those promises were actually true.

Despite the FCC voting to kill the popular consumer protections in December of 2017, Comcast’s latest earnings report indicates that the cable giant’s capital expenditures (CAPEX) for 2018 actually decreased 3 percent. The revelation comes on the heels by similar statements by Verizon and Charter Spectrum that they’d also be seeing lower network investment numbers in 2018. It’s not expected to get any better in 2019. According to analysis this week by Wall Street research firm MoffettNathanson, capital spending among the nation’s four biggest cable providers (Altice, Comcast, Charter Spectrum, CableONE) is expected to decline upwards of 5.8 percent this year.

Phone companies (AT&T, Verizon) are similarly expected to see their wireline capex fall from $20.3 billion in 2018 to $19.6 billion this year, notes the firm. And while investment in wireless is expected to jump slightly thanks to fifth generation (5G) investment, there too analysts have noted that overall investment is notably more sluggish than many had predicted.

The FCC did not respond to a request for comment on why its predictions have been so decidedly inaccurate. Meanwhile, none of this comes as much of a surprise to those well versed in the net neutrality fight. While the FCC and telecom sector repeatedly tried to claim that net neutrality rules stifled network investment, SEC filings, earnings reports, and even dozens of public statements made by countless CEOs easily disproved those claims. That didn’t stop either Pai or the telecom sector from repeating the claims countless times over a two-year span. Gigi Sohn, a former FCC lawyer who helped craft the agency’s net neutrality rules, told Motherboard that the repeal of net neutrality (and the Title II classification of ISPs that legally underpinned the protections) was based on little more than fluff and nonsense.

“The cornerstone of Ajit Pai’s net neutrality repeal order has quickly crumbled,” Sohn told me in an email. “The broadband industry's reduction in investment and CAPEX in the wake of Ajit Pai’s repeal of the net neutrality rules proves what advocates for Internet openness have known all along—neither the rules nor Title II authority had any effect on broadband investment.”

“Dismantling the basic principle that prevents companies like Comcast and Verizon from controlling what we see and do online helps no one other than telecom lobbyists and executives,” Evan Greer, Deputy Director of Fight For the Future, told Motherboard. The repeal of net neutrality “will go down in history as one of the most blatant examples of corruption in our nation's history,” Greer said. “It's not helping workers at these companies. It's not helping people in rural communities. It's not closing the digital divide,” Greer added. “The repeal of net neutrality is nothing but a massive government handout to some of the most unscrupulous, and least popular, corporations in the United States.”

And while big telecom has been understandably thrilled at its good fortune in the Trump era, there’s every indication that a looming backlash could spoil the sector’s fun as the pendulum inevitably swings back the other direction.