To the FCC, Chairman Wheeler, and the Unites States Congress and Senate; The very idea that your office would move forward with regulation that would allow telecommunications providers to charge a premium for faster bandwidth in this age of technology is not only unconscionable, but it is bad business. There are myriad reasons why this decision flies in the face of not only your duties as chairman of the FCC, but in the interest of the common working American. I’d like to outline my complaint below, and also assure you that the people will not stand by while your office fleeces the American people for the sake of mega-corporate interests such as Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. We will demand your resignation from office and work tirelessly to ensure you never hold a public office again should you allow such imbalanced policy to move forward. I am a freelance photographer, film maker, and graphic designer and my business lives and breathes based on my internet connection. I require a cost-effective and open internet to ensure my business functions on multiple levels. For one, I need to be able to maintain my website which is how I market to my client and deliver their final product to them. Placing me in a slow bandwidth because of my ability to pay for speed or visibility is tantamount to the US Interstate Highway system destroying the businesses along old US 66. How many diners and motels along US 66 close to make way for Holiday Inns and McDonalds along I-40? This is essentially the economic fallout you’d create by allowing Comcast to sell Amazon all the bandwidth they want while subjecting the craftsperson sling on Etsy to financial oblivion. Furthermore, the internet is part of the telecommunications system. Ma Bell was broken up for exactly the type of business that will be conducted should you allow the internet in the United States to become a pay-to-play system. Comcast will see fit to charge the consumer increasingly prohibitive fees while surely patting their big business friends on the back as they cut back-room deals to ensure that companies like Amazon benefit while small businesses like mine suffer. I find it unfathomable that in a time when Europe and Asia are developing faster internet infrastructures which serve the populace at large at reasonable rates, that the US would choose to move backwards to an almost feudal system where a corporation’s interest is more valued that that of the common American’s. Europeans continue to enjoy faster speeds at lower prices while companies like Comcast and Time-Warner charge increasingly higher fees for an aging infrastructure they are content to let crumble while they turn record profits. The internet is the new telephone. More people communicate via MMS, Email, and instant messenger systems than ever before, while the telephone becomes an increasingly less used device. The Telephone companies are not allowed this level of scope and control over the services they provide, why would you allow the same companies who are the remnant of Bell to do the same thing Bell was broken up for in the first place? I say again, to allow net neutrality to fade into the past would be a disservice to the American people. Comcast had too much money and control when they were allowed to buy NBC-Universal, they have too much money and control still. Should you allow this type of monopoly an control to continue, we the people will ensure that your payoff from Comcast to steal the internet away from the American people is the last payoff you receive. Justin McConnell justin@justinmcconnellmedia Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid.
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 21:17:32 +0000
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