Dear Friend:

Thank you for contacting me regarding equal and unrestricted access to the Internet. I welcome your thoughts and comments on this issue.

The Internet is a valuable tool that facilitates business, education, and recreation for millions of Americans. In 2008, an estimated 220 million Americans had access to the Internet at home or work. As Ranking Member of the Senate Commerce Committee, I am committed to ensuring that consumers benefit from competition in the telecommunications industry, resulting in lower prices, improved service, and access to 21st century technology.

Instrumental to the success of the Internet is the longstanding policy of keeping the Internet as free as possible from burdensome regulations. Increased investment in upgrading and expanding America’s Internet infrastructure, as well as innovative new broadband networks, will ensure that all Americans have access to affordable high-speed Internet. However, intensified regulation of the Internet, such as congressionally mandated treatment of data, would stifle competition and would decrease the incentive for network operators to invest in the Internet infrastructure.

It is my concern that mandates that prevent network providers from managing congestion on the Internet will reduce service speeds for many users, and eliminate a valuable tool for ensuring the most efficient use of network pipelines, resulting in increased costs to the consumer. In a June 2007 report on the issue of “network neutrality”, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stated that no “demonstrated consumer harm from conduct by broadband providers” had occurred due to network providers managing Internet traffic. More recently, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a decision involving Comcast and certain network management practices. While this decision works its way through the courts, Congress may continue reviewing network practices and Internet congestion issues.

Should any legislation regarding Internet access come before the Senate Commerce Committee, you may be assured I will keep your views in mind. I appreciate hearing from you, and I hope that you will not hesitate to keep in touch on any issue of concern to you.

Sincerely,
Kay Bailey Hutchison
United States Senator

284 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-5922 (tel)
202-224-0776 (fax)
http://hutchison.senate.gov

Just follow the money…..

There is no way in the world anyone will convince me the private sector would have constructed such a system on their own.

I understand your concern about RIAA and others’ inspecting your content, but in reality Net Neutrality, in reality, makes deep packet inspection much more difficult. In fact, providers should be exempted from any liability for the content that passes across their networks, and historically have been. ISPs should not be in the copyright enforcement business, and nothing about Net Neutrality changes that — if anything it makes it harder. A precedent is set when a provider messes around with inspecting the traffic on their networks. If they can do it for “x” then why not for “y.” Net Neutrality helps establish it’s not even okay for them to do “x.”

Competition can help solve these problems when it exists. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans can look forward to a monopoly/duopoly in broadband for the indefinite future. Wall Street simply doesn’t like private investment in the alternative – a robust competitive framework with price wars.

I think the system of checks and balances works pretty well. Unfortunately, a lot of corporate propaganda trying to make people believe the government is totally unequipped to serve as one has allowed too many providers to get away with whatever they want.

Our local DMV here in Rochester/Monroe County, run by a Republican county government, works very well with satellite locations, online renewals, extended hours, and much reduced waiting time. Government is not inherently unequipped to run things. Sometimes the people chosen to run them are. The same is true in the private sector.

The same way for the internet. The internet would be a whole lot less usefull if companies had to pay individual ISPs to get on a tier that garantees their traffic on the network.

What you are describing is a free market. I agree with your sentiment, except you need to realize that a free market does not exist and more likely than not will never exist because of the exact things that you describe.

Government regulation and intervention is needed because the current business model is in danger of being corrupted even more than what it currently is. I do agree that the regulations and intervention should not be all encompassing and should only cover what needs to be fixed, which is the unfair competition aspect and customer treatment (i.e. content control) by ISPs.

The RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and the other groups that you mention already have a lot of power and influence through lobbyists. Network neutrality would actually work against these companies. You don’t think that the RIAA and MPAA want file sharing traffic supported equally among other internet content do you? Currently, consumers are responding to the actions of these organizations: by not buying music CDs or DVDs and instead getting their content online.

I also think that you are totally missing the purpose of the FCC’s network neutrality initiative. The FCC’s network neutrality initiiative does not exist so that the FCC can tell these companies what they can do; rather, the initiative exists so that the FCC can tell these companies what they can’t do. They can’t discriminate traffic because they want to. They can’t hide the fact that they discriminate traffic. They can’t be dishonest to their customers about the products or services that they are selling. Without these guidelines and policies, unfair business practices and corruption could increase in the marketplace. With these guidelines and policies, unfair business practices and corruption may still exist, but it would be harder for these companies to achieve this unfairness and corruption.

We need competition in broadband instead. Comcast and Time Warner should absolutely be allowed to treat customers like crap. The deserve to lose significant market share. The way these companies are run – they deserve to go bankrupt. Please, let them run their companies into the ground with anti-customer policies, and let pro-consumer alternatives prosper.

Customers shouldn’t rely on the government to solve their problems, they should vote with their wallets. If you don’t like these companies go to a competitor. If the competition sucks today they will improve with more customers (and revenue). If you don’t have any competition then complain to your bad ISP or contact potential competitors. Do something other than relying on the government unless you want your internet experience to be more like the DMV…