Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to be able to join my friend Senator Markey here today. It has been exactly 1 year since the Trump FCC engineered the repeal of net neutrality, and I am going to spend the next few minutes making sure people understand what the effect of that has been. I want to begin by picking up on a point Senator Markey made with respect to what this is all about.

Net neutrality may still be a term that some people aren't familiar with, but what it is all about is a free and open internet. It means, in simple English, that after you pay your internet access fee, you get to go where you want, when you want, and how you want. That is what net neutrality is all about, and that is the essence of a free and open internet. As Senator Markey said, we wish we had had this policy embedded once and for all in Federal law. We wish it had happened eons ago, because we have been working both in the Senate and in the House to do it.

Now, if you are just picking up on this, you probably want to know: Well, the Senators are saying how the Trump FCC changed things in the last year; exactly what has happened? I am not sure the sky is falling and the like. So what I am going to do for a few minutes is to talk about actually what has happened over the last year.

Suffice it to say that the big cable companies are counting on making these changes. As for these changes, which are going to hurt consumers in a steady, creeping way, my sense is that the American people ought to know, for example, what these changes are doing to them and their service and what they pay for it.

There is one example that you have already seen. The big carriers are selling so-called unlimited data plans that totally throw away the definition of the word ``unlimited.'' To understand the complicated limits on internet access in these kind of new, newfangled unlimited plans, you almost need a degree in big-cable legal jargon. Consumers might be forced to swallow hard and accept it, but that doesn't make it acceptable.

Big cable companies and the entertainment giants are also reshaping their industries through megamergers. As big carriers merge, there is less competition and consumers have fewer choices. Some of those new megacorporations also own the content they distribute, and they want to reach as many consumers as possible. That means that what is happening now is that the internet is starting to fracture.

Sign up for internet service with one company, and you will be able to see their preferred bundle of content in high definition at top speeds. If you want to go outside their bundle of websites and streaming services, plan to pay a whole lot more.

That is a bad deal for the American consumer. American consumers ought to be able to access what they want and when they want to. As Senator Markey and I and Senator Cantwell have talked about, it is also a nightmare for the startup companies, the engines of innovation in America that will not be able to afford special treatment and will not be able to compete with these behemoths.

Now, the Trump FCC repealed net neutrality--and I will close with this--by making some very farfetched promises. They said, for example, that there would be new innovation. They can produce new innovation, Senator Markey, without any regulation. That hadn't happened.

The Trump FCC said the level of private investment in telecom would boom. We are still waiting on that one too. The Trump FCC spun a tale about voluntary net neutrality. We could all do this voluntarily-- claiming that the big cable companies would do the right thing on their own. That doesn't even pass the smell test.

By the way, colleagues, if the companies were fine with net neutrality, why would we need to get rid of it? They sure put a lot of effort into getting rid of this altogether.

The bottom line is, the Trump FCC has put consumers, from sea to shining sea--from Oregon, all the way across the country--basically at the hands of Big Cable. That is what they did when they repealed net neutrality.

I want to take some time to outline the changes we have seen in just the last year because not all of these changes are going to come at once. In fact, I think it is fair to say the big cable companies are counting on Americans not noticing sometimes when the terms of their contracts get worse, but, bit by bit, people are going to notice when their prices start rising. The fractures in the internet--I guess the big cable companies will try to figure out a way to say that, too, was a good deal for consumers, a discount on the content within one bundle rather than a price increase and data limits on everything else.

I will close with just one final point. That last example violates everything that Senator Markey, Senator Cantwell, and I have stood for, which is an open and free internet after you pay your internet access fee. I say this today, as Senator Cantwell gets ready to close this for us, we still envision what Senator Markey and I proposed, as I call it, eons ago. We still have made it clear that we are going to be out here fighting to embed, once and for all, in Federal law, an open and free internet. That means, after you pay your access fee, you get to go where you want, when you want, and how you want, and nothing less-- nothing less--keeps pace with the American consumer.

I thank my colleagues, Senator Markey, for his leadership on this, and Senator Cantwell, our leader on the Commerce Committee, and I look forward to working with both of them.

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