Save the Internet Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Ms. LOFGREN. Madam Chair, the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) partisan vote to rollback net neutrality regulations implemented under the Obama Administration was extremely troubling and quite wrong. Allowing internet service providers (ISPs) to charge for ``fast lanes'' would alter the internet significantly.

The idea that broadband internet access is an information service, rather than a telecommunications service, was a convenient legal- fiction in the 90s when broadband was in an infancy, to help speed its adoption. But classifying broadband as anything other than telecommunication service today is intellectually empty.

The argument the FCC puts forward that broadband is an information service because it offers domain name resolution is laughable. According to the FCC, you aren't buying internet access you are buying a DNS service, something I'm willing to bet 98 percent of broadband customers have never heard of.

It must be a triumph of marketing genius that broadband providers have sold 98 percent of their customers something that they have never heard of, or even knew they had. Under this logic, I guess telephone lines aren't telecommunication services, but phonebook information services.

Likewise, the FCC's argument that somehow net neutrality has harmed broadband deployment has not only been directly contradicted for years by broadband providers' statements to shareholders, one only needs to look at Comcast for an example of how wrong the FCC is.

Because of the consent decree it agreed to for its purchase of NBC Universal, Comcast was subject to net neutrality longer than any other broadband provider, from 2011 to 2018. In those 7 years, the average Comcast broadband connection went from 18 megabits per second to 69 megabits per second. In 2017, Comcast had the fastest national Speed Score according to internet speed test company Ookla.

As for the concerns around the reclassification itself, the FCC never attempted to use any of the Title II authorities that broadband companies were allegedly concerned about. In fact, the FCC barred themselves from doing so in the original net neutrality order.

By voting in favor of H.R. 1644, we will be codifying this forbearance, effectively preventing any future FCC from undoing that forbearance without Congress.

The Internet has become an indispensable part of all aspects of modern life. And our reliance on it as a neutral gateway will only increase. It would be irresponsible of Congress not to protect the openness and freedom of the Internet that has made so much possible.

I can't fathom why this isn't a bipartisan issue, but to quote Wade Randlett, founder of TechNet: ``The GOP seems to think that Orwellian language is going to work on the world's smartest people, . . . . If you say net neutrality is government regulation--and if you think there's anyone in the valley who thinks that's a true statement--you're already dead in the water. They would be better off just saying, `We respectfully disagree.' ''

I am a proud original cosponsor of H.R. 1644, the Save the Internet Act, and urge my colleagues to vote in favor.

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