Good afternoon. A number of you have been sending me ideas regarding petitions, complaint forms, and other public policy initiatives. I appreciate receiving this information, and the reason you have not seen much push in this direction as of yet is because I wanted to first make sure people who needed alternatives to a capped Road Runner could begin to find them, especially those with Price Protection plans which let you lock in cap-free Internet for as long as you can. A lot of folks have been very emotional with me in discussing this issue. One young lady wrote she was in tears and hysterical because her parents just cut off her Internet because they were sure the cap started immediately. Another wrote he was having trouble staying focused and felt completely deflated thinking about the many ways these caps will change his life.

For a lot of younger people, the online life they have always known is about to change forever if we are stuck in an all-cap world. It’s a major shell shocker, and you cannot get people refocused on the fight against this until you deal with the emotional shock some people are coping with. So step one was finding people some hope that while we prepare to go to war over this issue, their Internet connection will at least be safe, available, and not predisposed to empty your wallet.

Next week, the education will begin. A lot of consumers do not understand the broadband business, and are at risk of being co-opted into an industry “us vs. them” campaign, where we are left arguing over their terms about who is a “bandwidth hog” and who “deserves a lower bill.” The first thing you need to know is there is no such thing as a lower bill. No Time Warner plan is going to save you money on these terms. If you are a light user who barely uses the net, there are already plenty of alternatives out there that cost less than what TW charges today, and will charge and limit you with tomorrow. Anyone with cable already knows the only direction those bills will go is up. It’s just we’ve redefined the stratosphere.

So we’re going to understand that we’re all in this together, whether you are a casual or very heavy user. This isn’t about costs or fake “bandwidth shortages,” this is about padding profits plain and simple, and attempting to kill off potential competition before it gets started.

And that latter point will be the direction we are going to go legislatively. Not only dealing with the net neutrality issue, but also the concepts of a level playing field, redlining people into bandwidth have’s and have not’s, and also equity of access for our rural communities. These are all points legislators care about, and since cable broadband service is completely unregulated, simply complaining about something legislators have no authority over at the moment will not help us. We’ll be dealing with state and local officials, federal agencies, and also private entities that stand to lose much more than we have. It’s time for Netflix and other like companies to start ponying up resources and get in the game, or their days are numbered.

Stay tuned. You can read a moderately improved article above the fold in today’s Democrat & Chronicle. It’s better than the last one, but there is still simply a ton of information missing. Ask us.