Disapproving the Rule Submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with Respect to Regulating the Internet and Broadband Industry Practices

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. I thank the chairman of the Commerce Committee for his leadership on this important issue. I am glad to be on the Senate floor to set the record straight because we are here to talk about Internet freedom and about making sure the Internet does not have undue costs and expenses for consumers.

If you liked TARP and you liked the bailout of the big banks, well, guess what. Then you should vote for this resolution because this resolution is about whether you are going to let the communications companies that want to make the Internet more expensive by various technologies have their way.

If you believe the FCC should establish some rules to protect the freedom of the Internet, then you should oppose the Hutchison resolution. I prefer legislation that I have introduced, and some of my colleagues support, called the Freedom of the Internet Act, that goes further than what the Federal Communications Commission has done to implement true net neutrality. I would prefer that, and maybe in the future my colleagues will be working on such legislation.

But as it is today, the Federal Communications Commission has taken a half step, if you will, by proposing some rules that will set in place some protections for consumers to make sure they are protected on important aspects of keeping Internet costs down. The problem with the FCC rules is they only apply in some cases to fixed broadband and not to mobile broadband.

So if you think about it this way, the Internet is moving to a mobile broadband platform; that is, our hand-held devices, whether they are a BlackBerry or phone or what have you. So many more Americans are accessing the Internet that way. So the FCC has come up with rules on transparency and no blocking; that is, to make sure no content is blocked or slowed down for any undue cost or reason, and a nondiscrimination rule.

Unfortunately, those two last points, no blocking and unreasonable discrimination, do not apply to the mobile side. So we have work to do to make sure the youth of America who are consuming so much content online through their mobile devices are not going to be artificially charged more or slowed down in their access all because the telecommunications industry wants to have its way with the Internet.

My colleagues have been out here talking about innovation. I can tell you, the Internet has had a ton of innovation and a ton of content creation, all because there has been an even playing field and net neutrality. The fact now is that the telecommunications companies are debating an important issue, and the lines get blurred between telecommunications and the Internet, and it is clear we do not have all of the rules in place to make sure consumer interests are protected.

But today we have one thing: the FCC rules that are trying to slow down telecommunication companies from artificially either blocking or making content on the Internet more expensive. Again, when we go to the mobile phone model and we are being charged for time and data transfer, the fact that the data transfer and time take longer means we are going to have more expensive phone bills. That is why I said it was TARP-like, because the ``cha-ching'' we are going to hear from the phone companies on the money they are going to make from this is unbelievable.

So thank God the FCC took a half step and said: Whoa. Slow down. We are not going to let you do that. That is why people like Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee, the architects and inventors pushing the Internet, have said what a bad idea it is to not make sure that net neutrality is the law of the land.

I notice my colleague who just spoke said, well, there have not been any problems. There have not been any issues. I read the online publications. Larry Lessig, someone I trust, was recounting in one of his interviews exactly what happened. Comcast went in and basically blocked large data files of peer-to-peer transfer, what is called bit torrent traffic.

First, Comcast said: No, no. We do not do that. We did not block that. We do not do it. But when it was basically found out that they did, they said: Oh, no, we did not block it. We just slowed it down. They sent little messages, as Mr. Lessig says in his article, to the Internet traffic to confuse the recipient and basically disrupt their traffic. OK? So that is what is happening.

These providers think if they can control the pipe, now they can also control the flow. It is also, as Mr. Lessig said later in this article, as if the entire electricity grid, our refrigerators and our toasters and our dryers, all of a sudden would start charging different rates on different things because the electricity company would decide it had the ability to charge different rates. Would we put up with that? No, we would not put up with that.

So why would we put up with allowing telcos to run at will on the Internet charging consumers anything they want based on the fact that they think they have the control of the switch?

I am so proud the chairman, Senator Rockefeller, has led this fight for the freedom of the Internet to drive down costs, to keep innovation, and to protect net neutrality. The FCC rules do not go far enough. We cannot continue to have this half step and not clearly, on the mobile side, give consumers the protection they need.

But for today, if you want to vote with Internet consumers and Internet users on driving down the costs of the Internet, then vote against this resolution and keep the minimal FCC rules in place until we can get stronger legislation passed. Make no mistake about it, the other side is talking about, well, they do not want to regulate the Internet. That is true. They do not want to regulate telcos that want to take advantage of the fact that they own the pipe and can charge a lot more.

I am glad the FCC at least took this measure. We should make sure it stands until we can even get stronger Internet freedom protection.

I yield the floor.

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