Jenkins

The Wall Street Journal attempted to attach its own conventional wisdom in an opinion piece about cloud-based streaming that suggests Canada “is just ahead of the U.S. in introducing usage-based pricing [and] has bloggers and politicians accusing Bell Canada of unconscionable ‘profiteering’ from usage caps. The company, they rage, is reaping huge fees for additional units of bandwidth that cost Bell Canada virtually nothing to provide.”

The author, Holman Jenkins, is a regular on the ultra-business friendly editorial page of the Journal, and has been raging against Net Neutrality and for higher Internet pricing for several years now.

Jenkins’ latest argument, just like his earlier ones on this subject, falls apart almost immediately:

This critique, which is common, could not more comprehensively miss the point. Another car on the roadway poses no additional cost on the road builder; it imposes a cost on other road users. Likewise, network operators don’t use overage penalties to collect their marginal costs but to shape user behavior so a shared resource won’t be overtaxed.

Jenkins needs to spend less time supporting his friends at companies like AT&T and Bell and more time exploring road construction costs.  If you are going to try and make an analogy about traffic, at least get your premise straight.

Before debunking his usage-based billing meme, let’s talk about road construction for a moment.  In fact, the kind of traffic volume on a roadway has everything to do with what kind of road is constructed.  In the appropriately named “Idiots’ Guide to Highway Maintenance,” C.J.Summers explores different types of road surfaces for different kinds of traffic.  Light duty roads in rural areas can get results with oil and stone.  Medium duty side streets and avenues are frequently paved with asphalt, and heavy duty interstates routinely use concrete.  Traffic studies are performed routinely to assist engineers in choosing the right material to get the job done.

Digital information doesn’t wear down cables or airwaves.  If broadband traffic occupies 5 or 95 percent of a digital pipeline, it makes no difference to the pipeline.  Jenkins is right when he says Internet Overcharging schemes are all about shaping user behavior, but for the wrong reasons.

Jenkins thinks Netflix and other high bandwidth applications face usage-based pricing to allow providers to keep their broadband pipes from getting overcongested:

Netflix is one of the companies most threatened by usage-based pricing, and it has quickly geared up a lobbying team in Washington. In a recent letter to shareholders, CEO Reed Hastings downplayed the challenge to Netflix’s video-streaming business. In the long run, he’s probably right—the market will settle on flat-rate pricing once the video-intensive user has become the average user.

In the meantime, however, Netflix shareholders had better look out.

In fact, providers are reaping the rewards of their popular broadband services, but almost uniformly are less interested in investing in them to match capacity.  It is as if the AT&Ts of this world assumed broadband users would consume    T H I S    M U C H   and that’s it — time to collect profits.  When upgrade investments don’t even keep up as a percentage of revenue earned over past years, the inevitable result will be a custom-made excuse to impose usage limits and consumption billing to manage the “data tsunami.”

Canadian providers did not slap usage caps on broadband users because Netflix arrived — they lowered them. Telling users they cannot consume the same amount of bandwidth they used a month earlier has nothing to do with managing traffic, it’s about protecting their video businesses by discouraging consumers from even contemplating using the competition.  Jenkins works for a company that understands that perfectly well.  News Corp., has a major interest in Hulu as well as satellite television services in Europe and Oceania.

The rest of Jenkins’ piece is as smug as it is wrong.  In attacking Net Neutrality supporters as “crazies” trying to defend their “hobby horse,” Jenkins claims public interest groups are pouting about usage-based billing, too:

All along, what the net neut crazies have lacked in intellectual consistency they’ve made up in fealty to the business interests of companies that fear their services would become unattractive if users had one eye on a bandwidth meter. That’s why opposition to “Internet censorship” morphed into opposition to anything that might price or allocate broadband capacity rationally. But such a stance is rapidly becoming untenable, whether the beneficiary is Google, with its advertising-based business model, or Netflix, Apple, Amazon and others who hope to capitalize on the entertainment-streaming opportunity.

All are betting heavily on the cloud. All need to start dealing realistically with the question of how the necessary bandwidth will be paid for.

Part of Jenkins’ theory calls back on his usual Google bashing — he perceives the company as a parasite stealing the resources bandwidth providers paid for, while forgetting the success of their businesses ultimately depends on content producers (who indeed pay billions for their own bandwidth) making the service interesting enough for consumers to buy.

But there is nothing rational about Jenkins’ support for Internet Overcharging.  North Americans already pay some of the highest prices in the world for the slowest service.  While providers attempt to lick the last drop of profits out of increasingly outdated networks (hello DSL!), their future strategy is less about expanding those networks and more about constraining the use of them.

Jenkins is ignorant of the fact several of Net Neutrality’s strongest proponents, Public Knowledge being a classic example, have not historically opposed usage-based pricing, much to my personal consternation.  As we’ve argued (and I submit proved), Net Neutrality and Internet Overcharging go hand in hand for revenue hungry providers.  If they cannot discriminate, throttle, or block traffic they consider to be costly to their networks, they can simply cap demand on the customer side with usage limits or confiscatory pricing designed to discourage use.  That is precisely what Canadians are fighting against.

It’s all made possible by a broken free market.  Instead of hearty competition, most North Americans endure a duopoly — a phone company and a cable company.  Both, particularly in Canada, have vested interests in video entertainment, television and cable networks, and other entertainment properties.  As long as these interests exist, companies will always resist challenges to their core business models, such as cable TV cord cutting.  It’s as simple as that.

The “realistic” way bandwidth will be paid for escapes Jenkins because his quest for condescension takes precedence over actual facts.  Content producers already pay enormous sums to bandwidth providers like Akamai, Amazon, and other cloud-based distribution centers.  Consumers pay handsomely for their broadband connections, part of which covers the costs of delivering that content to their homes and businesses.  AT&T and other providers don’t deserve to get paid twice for the same content.  Indeed, they should be investing some of their enormous profits in building a new generation of fiber-based broadband pipelines to keep their customers happy.  Because no matter how much data you cram down a glass fiber, the ‘data friction’ will never cause those cables to go down in flames, unlike Jenkins’ lapsed-from-reality arguments.

Suddenlink, one of America’s smaller cable operators, has been undergoing a transformation as it tries to meet expectations of today’s cable subscribers and match whatever phone company competition comes their way.  While some of the upgrades are customer-friendly, others pose ominous signs for the future — particularly with respect to Internet Overcharging broadband customers.

Let’s explore:

The Good — New Broadband Speeds, New DVR, New Investments

Suddenlink cuts the ribbon on its new store in El Dorado. (Courtesy: Suddenlink FYI)

In parts of Suddenlink’s service area, particularly in Texas, the company is moving most of its cable service to a digital platform.  This transition is designed to open up additional space for more HD channels, keep up with broadband demands, and open the door for additional on-demand programming.

In Nacogdoches, Suddenlink announced it was adopting an all-digital TV lineup.  Starting this week, the company is offering subscribers free digital adapters — also known as “DigitaLinks,” to enable continued viewing on analog television sets that do not have a set top box or digital tuning capability.  Every subscriber purchasing more than the broadcast basic package (that only includes local stations and a handful of cable networks) will either need a digital tuner-ready television, a set top box, or a DigitaLink device to continue watching.

What is good about this transition is that Suddenlink is not charging customers a monthly fee for the adapters, either now or in the future.  That contrasts with other cable companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable that have handed customers a set top box or a digital adapter they will begin charging for after a year or two.

Suddenlink expects to invest nearly $120 million this year in Texas, and by the end of the year will have invested nearly a half-billion dollars in the state since 2006.

Texas is extremely important to Suddenlink.  The third largest cable company in Texas serves about 450,000 households and approximately 27,000 business customers in Amarillo, Lubbock, Abilene, Bryan-College Station, Midland, San Angelo, Georgetown, Tyler, Victoria, Conroe, Kingwood and Nacogdoches.

Suddenlink's New TiVo DVR

The company has also lit new fiber connections to handle data communications, primarily for business customers, and is upgrading its broadband service to fully support DOCSIS 3, which will deliver faster speeds and less congested service.

Customers in the state are also among the first to get access to a new and improved DVR box built on a TiVo software platform.  Suddenlink’s “Premiere DVR” service ($17/mo) is now available in Midland, Floydada, Plainview, Amarillo, Canyon, and Tulia.

The Bad — “Suddenlink Residential Internet Service is for Entertainment” Purposes Only

The Humboldt County, Calif. Journal's "Seven-o-heaven" comic strip commented on Suddenlink's problems. (Click the image to see the entire strip.)

Do you take your broadband service seriously, or is it simply another entertainment option in your home?  If you answered the latter, this story may not be so surprising.

In Humboldt County, Calif., broadband users started noticing their favorite web pages stopped updating on a regular basis.  At one point, a blogger in McKinleyville noticed he couldn’t manage to post comments on his own website.  But things got much worse when several web pages started reaching customers with other users’ names (and occasionally e-mail addresses) already filled in on login screens and comment forms.

It seems Suddenlink started to cache web content in the far northern coastal county of California, meaning the first customer to visit a particular website triggered Suddenlink’s local servers to store a copy of the page, so that future customers headed to the same website received the locally-stored copy, not the actual live page.

But the caching software went haywire.

Web visitors began to receive mobile versions of web sites even though they were using home computers at the time.  Some were asked if they wanted to download a copy of a web page instead of viewing it.  And many others discovered websites were customized for earlier visitors.

While the caching problem was irritating, the privacy breaches Suddenlink enabled were disturbing, as was the initial total lack of response from Suddenlink officials when the problem first started in late January.

The Journal finally reached a representative who provided this explanation:

Suddenlink Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications Pete Abel knew that a cache system had recently been installed in Humboldt County, but was unaware of the particular problems reported by users. After speaking with the Journal and other Suddenlink employees, though, he released a statement explaining what appeared to have happened.

According to the release, the cache system was installed in Humboldt County on Thursday, Jan. 27 — the very day that users began experiencing problems — and was intended as an interim solution to relatively low Internet speeds in Humboldt County. The system, it said, was able to cache only unsecure websites — those which, unlike almost all reputable banking or commerce systems — do not encrypt communications. But the company eventually discovered the problems that its customers had been reporting and, having fruitlessly worked with its vendor to find a solution, turned the system off on Monday.

“The good news is that secure Web site pages will not have been cached,” Abel said in a follow-up call to the Journal. “And I have been assured 100 ways from Sunday that never would have happened.”

Andrew Jones, who runs a blog with his Suddenlink broadband account, tried to opt out of the web caching and received an interesting response, in writing, from a Suddenlink representative.  He was told he could not opt out of cached web pages with a residential account because, “the residential service is for entertainment only.”

Jones was told he would have to upgrade to a business account to escape the cache.

“If a small local radio station intermittently went off air for multiple days, the radio host would be apologizing and explaining the situation,” Jones wrote the Journal. “If a large utility company experienced sporadic power outages, people could hear a recording on a toll-free number to learn the cause and about ongoing repairs. What does an Internet provider do when web access becomes spotty and begins serving customers old copies of web pages? The company gets back to you in a couple days and suggests you pay more if you don’t like its recently degraded services.”

The Ugly — Suddenlink’s New Usage Meter Suggests 43GB is An Appropriate Amount of Usage for Standard Internet, 87GB is Plenty for Their $60 Premium Package

Although Suddenlink has not formally adopted an Internet Overcharging scheme of usage caps or metered billing, the company is sending automated e-mail messages to customers who exceed what they call “typical monthly usage for customers in your package.”  The e-mail tells customers they may be infected with a virus or someone else could be using your connection without your permission.  Boo!  For the uninitiated, this kind of message can bring fear that their computer has been invaded, either with malicious malware or the neighbor next door.

Customers have also received letters in the mail from the company telling them to check out their new “usage meter.”  Several have been sharing how much they’ve racked up in usage during the month on Broadband Reports.  One customer managed 243GB while another looking at the company’s super premium 107/5Mbps package managed a whopping 786GB.

Although the wording of the message has strenuously avoided telling customers they are wrong for this amount of usage, the implication is clear to many: they are counting your gigabytes and identifying the outliers.  One customer called it Suddenlink’s “You’re actually using your connection, and we really wish you wouldn’t”-message.

“No one with an ounce of sense would pay for a 20/3Mbps connection and only use 78 GB in a month. Let’s hope they’re just making cute suggestions, not easing us into a cap, because that just won’t fly,” wrote one West Virginia customer.

Another in Georgetown, Texas did the math and made it clear 43GB better not turn out to be a cap because it means customers can barely use the service they are paying for.

“It’s way too low. I got 10Mbps [service] because of price/value and not because I use less than 43GB,” he writes. “[Even] if I downloaded at 1.25MB/s for 30 days straight (1.25 * 2592000 seconds) I could [still] grab 3.164TB.”

Clyde (Courtesy: KUSH Radio/Donna Judd)

Meanwhile, some controversy over the quality of Suddenlink’s service during the upgrade process had some residents in Cushing, Okla., up in arms at a recent city meeting.  Lorene Clyde complained Suddenlink’s “new and improved” service is worse than ever.

“I’m tired of paying for a service I’m not getting,” Clyde said.  “And the Suddenlink commercials – they are like rubbing salt in a wound.”

KUSH-AM reporters were on hand to cover the event, noting Clyde was not the only one complaining.  The radio station noted that “the buzz around town echoes her sentiments – from the ‘mildly irritated’ to the ‘downright mad’ – citizens have been complaining.  Not only have they been complaining to Suddenlink – as difficult as that may be (the call center is in Tyler, Texas) – but to city leaders.”

What Clyde and others may not have realized is that Suddenlink officials were in attendance and were able to apologize for the problems, but a growing consensus among consumers and city leaders is that a broad-based refund for the poor service was warranted.

Commissioner Joe Manning said while he appreciated the promise to figure out the problem, it wasn’t good enough to just apologize and promise – that subscribers’ bills should be adjusted to reflect the poor service.

Commissioners Carey Seigle and Tommy Johnson agreed with Manning.  Seigle pointed out it would be “good P.R.” to give some sort of rebate across the board to subscribers while Johnson complained that the original “upgrade” was only going to take a few weeks and now 8 months later – things are not better, but worse, noted the radio station.

Suddenlink officials on hand said they did not have that kind of authority, but continued to promise things are going to get better.  “I pledge to you,” one said, “We will find it [the problem] and fix it.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/KJTV Lubbock Borrowing Wi-Fi 2-7-11.flv[/flv]

KJTV-TV in Lubbock, Texas talked with Suddenlink about the growing trend of neighbors “borrowing” neighbors’ unsecured Wi-Fi networks.  Other than the accidental recommendation that consumers should “invest in Internet spyware” to keep your computer safe, the report does a fair job of shining a light on a practice that could have financial consequences if the provider implements an Internet Overcharging scheme.  (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/StopThe Meter By the Site Girls.flv[/flv]

As ordinary Canadians continue to fight back against Internet Overcharging schemes, the topic remains part of the country’s social consciousness.  That means providers and the regulators that appease them are ripe for satire, as this music video from ForgetTheBox illustrates.  (1 minute)

Although the English needs a little work, Korean broadband delivers a reality most Americans can only imagine.

South Korea has launched a nationwide broadband upgrade to rid themselves of 100Mbps service for $38 a month, claiming those speeds and prices are no longer sufficient for Korea’s new digital economy.

By the end of 2012, South Korea intends to connect every home in the country to the Internet at one gigabit per second and slash the monthly price to just $27 a month.

That’s more than 200 times faster than speeds enjoyed by most Americans, who pay an average of $46 a month — nearly double Korea’s planned price. Even more galling for Canadians — those speeds and prices are for completely unlimited access.

Stop the Cap! reader John in Victoria, B.C., thinks South Korea’s broadband improvements call out just how ludicrous Canada’s Internet Overcharging schemes really are.

“If the Canadian Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission ultimately allows $2 per gigabyte in overlimit fees, we would have to pay $5,184,000 per month for the same thing,” John says. “If this comparison doesn’t make people want to chuck the CRTC, what will?”

For the government of South Korea, which is spearheading the Internet expansion effort, broadband has become a national priority for the fast-growing Korean economy.

[flv width=”640″ height=”447″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Hello CJ TV.flv[/flv]

Korea’s CJ HelloVision cable system delivers TV programming, broadband, and phone service at speeds and prices that make North American providers look ridiculous.  Bonus: That sure looks like Sarah Palin making a cameo appearance in this animated video.  (1 minute)

South Korea historically trailed Japan’s economic post-World War II revival for decades, but no more. The country, which used to be poorer than the Communist People’s Republic of Korea to the north, has grown to the world’s 13th largest economic power, and has designs on being a world leader in the transition to the digital/information economy. They are already ahead of North America, with an advanced broadband platform that can sustain concepts like cloud computing that are just getting off the ground in Canada and the USA.

The KCC is spearheading Korea's broadband advancements

Only the most rural parts of Korea still rely on copper phone wires delivering DSL service, now considered archaic. Most of the country is now wired for fiber optics, making a transition from 100Mbps-1Gbps relatively simple. With new laser technology, existing fiber cables can transmit faster speeds, and when fiber is laid in the country, extra strands are buried for future use. The costs of burying 10 or 100 or 1,000 strands come mostly from labor, not the wiring.

Private electronics companies are strong proponents of the infrastructure upgrades, and service providers are on board to deliver the service. That is in marked contrast with providers in the United States and Canada who consider expensive upgrades an unnecessary proposition.

“Providers in the USA and Canada defend their existing networks as ‘good enough for average residential use,’ something that would be laughed away here in Korea or in Japan,” Dr. Park Sung-Jin, a Korean broadband researcher who travels between Seoul and Los Angeles tells Stop the Cap! “Large providers like AT&T cannot afford to lose their propaganda arguments of broadband sufficiency because if they did, they would lose face and be forced to transform broadband in the USA at the expense of their enormous profits.”

“In Asia, we would never allow our providers to dictate the national broadband policies of the country, and our discussions are long past arguing over what speeds are correct,” Park says.  “Now we’re arguing about how to bring the cost down.”

Japan delivers 1Gbps broadband service for $70 a month, a price scoffed at by Choi Gwang-gi, the 28-year old Korean now in charge of the Korea’s expansive broadband plans.

“I can’t imagine anyone in Korea paying that much,” Choi told the New York Times. “No, no, that’s unthinkable.”

A pilot gigabit project initiated by the government is underway with 5,000 households in five South Korean cities. Each customer pays about 30,000 won a month, or less than $27.

“A lot of Koreans are early adopters,” Mr. Choi said, “and we thought we needed to be prepared for things like 3-D TV, Internet protocol TV, high-definition multimedia, gaming and videoconferencing, ultra-high-definition TV, cloud computing.”

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/200Mbps Broadband.flv[/flv]

Hello Broadband delivers a silly advertisement for its soon to be obsolete 200Mbps broadband service.  (1 minute)

Meanwhile, according to Dr. Park, North American providers like Bell, Rogers, and Comcast are spending millions trying to convince lawmakers in both countries that such speeds are wholly unnecessary.

“The United States and Canada are the worst, with providers spending countless millions themselves and through their lackey trade associations and illicit ‘consumer groups’ working for them trying to convince lawmakers American broadband isn’t so bad after all, but it is,” Park says. “They routinely claim any country that is ahead of the U.S. or Canada is a ‘special case’ because of urban density or government subsidies, but that can’t explain away all of the disparity in speeds and accessibility, only money and monopoly profits can.”

Both Romania and Latvia now beat Canada and the USA in broadband speeds and pricing, and North America’s dominance in a digital economy could be at risk.

Closer to home Don Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group in Fremont, Calif., told the Times Korea is on the right track.

“The gigabit Internet is essential for the future, absolutely essential, and all the technologists will tell you this,” said Norman. “We’re all going to be doing cloud computing, for example, and that won’t work if you’re not always connected. Games. Videoconferencing. Video on demand. All this will require huge bandwidth, huge speed.”

In Canada, such predictions have given companies like Bell an excuse to engage in a national Internet Overcharging scheme they claim will help pay for building these kinds of future networks. But other countries around the world now deliver speeds Canada only promises their citizens, without overcharging them to pay for it.

“Charging for broadband traffic would be like you or I charging for the wind — it has no real value except in the eyes of the people who stand to profit from it,” Park said.

Will people notice a difference between 100Mbps and 1Gbps? Koreans say they will, according to the New York Times.

One of the customers already connected to Mr. Choi’s pilot program is Moon Ki-soo, 42, an Internet consultant. He got a gigabit hookup about a year ago through CJ Hellovision, although because of the internal wiring of his apartment building his actual connection speed clocks in at 278 megabits a second.

But even that speed — about a quarter-gigabit — has him dazzled.

“It is so much more convenient to watch movies and drama shows now,” he told the newspaper.

[flv width=”368″ height=”228″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Giga Internet.flv[/flv]

This Korean language promotional video for Giga Internet, the marketing brand for 1Gbps broadband, still dazzles the imagination for those who lack the ability to follow the words.  As you watch, consider how America’s typical DSL service provider leaves millions of Americans with a ‘covered wagon’ 3Mbps broadband solution.  (6 minutes)

[flv width=”480″ height=”340″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/SK Broadband.mp4[/flv]

A stylish ad for SK Broadband, declaring new high speeds will let users “See the Unseen.”  (1 minute)

A small wireless ISP owner who regularly complains about Net Neutrality and an industry friendly group that opposes broadband oversight were the handpicked guests at a hearing held today to investigate Net Neutrality.  Only one witness, Gigi Sohn from Public Knowledge was there to defend the important consumer net protection principle.

The hearing, held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on IP, Competition and the Internet was among the first held in the new Republican-controlled Congress, which overwhelmingly opposes Net Neutrality.  It opened an opportunity for Net Neutrality-opponents to attack the watered down rules, adopted by the Federal Communications Commission last December.

Laurence “Brett” Glass, owner of Lariat, a wireless ISP in Laramie, Wyoming, is a familiar name to those who follow comment sections of public interest websites and newspapers.  Glass regularly attacks the concept of Net Neutrality and favors Internet Overcharging schemes, if only to protect revenues on his bandwidth-limited wireless ISP.

Glass told Congress adoption of even the FCC’s watered down regulations will put his company’s future at risk because they could be interpreted to allow “servers” on his network.  Andrew Schwartzman, a net-neutrality proponent and senior vice president at the Media Access Project, says the restriction could technically violate rules, but only if it was argued as a prohibition of attaching server hardware/equipment.

“He is describing a practice which would violate Michael Powell’s 4 principles from 2005 (I think) since it allows end users to attach any device,” Schwartzman said in an e-mail to The Hill.

Of course, the watered down Net Neutrality regulations exempt wireless networks, and Glass’ argument ignores the long-recognized concept of the Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits network activities that can create problems for the network itself or other customers.  The FCC moving in to crush Lariat over such a scenario is hard to imagine in any case.

Larry Downes, another witness, represents the Big Telecom-friendly TechFreedom, which loathes industry regulations that could impact big players like AT&T and Verizon.

Downes argued the Net Neutrality rules were slipped in during the Lame Duck Session to avoid Republican scrutiny on Capitol Hill and are completely unnecessary.  Downes argues:

• There is no need for new regulation because there were never any serious violations (ignoring the Comcast incident that interfered with network traffic and the subsequent adventures (by others) this year on the wireless side where content access is being repackaged and sold by third parties based on access and usage).
• Enforcement mechanisms are complex and expensive: It costs too much to investigate, so why bother?
• Exceptions reveal a profound misunderstanding of “the Open Internet”: Downes argues today’s well-accepted concept of speed equality and agnostic network management are simply popular with consumers and irrelevant to the technical workings of the Internet itself.
• The FCC lacked authority to issue the rules—and likely knew it: By not invoking appropriate authority, the FCC’s new Net Neutrality policies may fail to pass court scrutiny.

Downes favors a different kind of net freedom — one for corporations to treat the online ecosystem as they please and let the free market sort it out.  If you are served by two providers who believe in Internet Overcharging schemes and speed throttles, so be it.  If you’re lucky enough to be served by a provider that supports today’s online experience, lucky you.

The FCC evidently was not invited to testify about their own policy.  Instead, Public Knowledge’s Gigi Sohn argued for Net Neutrality, but even she complains the FCC’s current provisions of that policy don’t go far enough.  Public Knowledge is planning a pushback against Republican-led efforts to repeal Net Neutrality in a campaign launching later this week — The Internet Strikes Back.

(Click the image on the left to enroll in the campaign and participate in the effort to stand up for Net Neutrality this Thursday.)

Public Knowledge:

You – the Internet – are going to make it clear that ISPs cannot be gatekeepers and do not get to choose which websites work and which websites do not work.  You – the Internet – will tell all of Congress to join the 105 Representatives who have already come out clearly in support of a free and open Internet.