The man who invented the World-Wide-Web sees the phone and cable company plan to gut Net Neutrality as a looming threat to free speech and economic innovation in America. In a New York Times interview, Internet pioneer Sir Tim Berners-Lee said that the neutrality of the Net is “essential for democracy.”

In the 1980s, Sir Tim first proposed the idea of linking documents with hypertext software pointers — a concept that evolved, in the 1990s, into the World Wide Web.

Throughout 2006, Berners-Lee has spoken passionately in favor of protecting Net Neutrality. In yesterday’s Times interview, he warned against companies, like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, that seek to remake the information superhighway into their private toll road.

“I think the people who talk about dismantling — threatening — Net neutrality don’t appreciate how important it has been for us to have an independent market for productivity and for applications on the Internet,” Berners-Lee said, adding that these companies seem incapable of adapting their outdated corporate cultures to the challenges of the Internet.

According to Berners-Lee, killing Net neutrality in the U.S. would put the country even further behind in the race to bridge the digital divide and bring cheaper, faster access and better economic opportunity to more people.

“[I]f the United States ends up faltering in its quest for Net neutrality, I think the rest of the world will be horrified, and there will be very strong pressure from other countries who will become a world separate from the U.S., where the Net is neutral,” Berners-Lee told Times interviewer John Markoff.

“If things go wrong in the States, then I think the result could be that the United States would then have a less-competitive market where content providers could provide a limited selection of all the same old movies to their customers because they have a captive market.”

Berners-Lee also clarifies the debate over service fees for special types of data, calling “not actually logical” people who say that Net Neutrality prevents “Quality of Service” upgrades:

“Some people say perhaps we ought to be able to charge more for this very special high-bandwidth connectivity. Of course that’s fine, charge more. Nobody is suggesting that you shouldn’t be able to charge more for a video-capable Internet connection. That’s no reason not to make it anything but neutral.”

Berners-Lee echoes SavetheInternet.com’s position against discrimination on the Web. We don’t think that it’s wrong for the network operators to be able to prioritize certain types of content. For instance, they can prioritize telemedicine over regular data files. The Net Neutrality rules that we and Berners-Lee support concern stopping discrimination based on the source or ownership of content.

If network operators favor one hospital’s telemedicine site over another, that’s the problem. That’s when the network operators can turn the Web into their private fiefdom, awarding fast-track services to their corporate allies while shunting all others to a slow lane. Under this scenario, the free and open Internet no longer exists.

Sen. Ted Stevens’ desperation is beginning to show. With his telecommunications legislation in the DC doldrums, the good senator from Alaska has resorted to spamming his colleagues with phone company propaganda.

From his seat at the head of the Commerce Committee, Stevens is emailing around the results of a “bipartisan poll,” which, according to the senator’s spin, proves beyond a whisper of a doubt that Americans love his legislation and hate Net Neutrality.

One problem: this supposedly objective poll is a sham.

It was paid for by Verizon Communications and carried out by Washington lobbying and consulting firms that boast major phone and cable companies as clients.

No matter for Senator Stevens. He has no qualms once again using the Commerce Committee seal to serve the interests of his friends at the phone companies. The resulting poll is so stacked towards one side of the debate that no serious pollster, scholar or journalist would dare touch its findings. Here’s a sample question lifted straight from the poll:

Which of the following two items do you think is the most important to you:

Delivering the benefits of new TV and video choice so consumers will see increased competition and lower prices for cable TV?

OR

Enhancing Internet neutrality by barring high speed internet providers from offering specialized services like faster speed and increased security for a fee?

As Matt Stoller wrote, “the rest of the questionnaire is similarly structured along the lines of ‘do you want lots and lots of pie or would you like a kidney infection’.”

What’s particularly amazing is that 17 percent of the respondents chose the kidney infection.

But that’s no deterrent to the many Astroturf groups that shamelessly front for the phone companies. They have trumpeted the phony survey as proof positive that Net Neutrality is a non-issue for Americans — dismissing the more than a million people who have written Congress, called their representatives and turned out at dozens of pro-Net Neutrality events across the country.

In August alone, these grassroots actions convinced seven senators to announce their support for Net Neutrality — carrying forth momentum against Stevens’ deeply flawed legislation.

In the Astroturfers’ version of reality, though, the future of the Internet is best left in the hands of the telco lobby — conveniently, the same corporations that pay the Astroturfers‘ bills. Go figure.

The public doesn’t really care about Internet freedom, they say — and hey, they’ve bought a poll so they must be right. As Jeff Chester wrote in his commentary in The Nation today:

[N]either the poll nor the press release issued by Stevens revealed, as the Wall Street Journal did today, that Verizon had paid for the study. The role of Verizon is not surprising, given that the poll was developed by the Glover Park Group lobbying shop (along with Public Opinion Strategies). Glover Park–which is run by such high-level Democratic Party advisers as Howard Wolfson, Joe Lockhart and Carter Eskew–has been helping Verizon in its efforts to scuttle broadband policy safeguards since 2005.

Cynthia Brumfield of IP Democracy heaps more scorn on Stevens:

All of this shameless propagation of corporate-sponsored lobbying dreck reflects nothing other than last-ditch desperation by Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK), who is almost out of time to pass his telecom reform bill before this Congress is history. After intensive lobbying, Senator Stevens still doesn’t have the 60 votes he needs to shut down a filibuster on the bill.

So whom should you trust on Net Neutrality?

We’ll leave that decision to you. But be wary of phone company pollsters and spamming senators claiming to know what you want.

The American Electronics Association (AeA) released a report yesterday strongly supporting Net Neutrality and urging Congress: “Don’t stifle competition and innovation by allowing network operators to change and distort what is currently a highly competitive system.”

“The principles of Net Neutrality have created the Internet as we know it — the most dynamic network for communication and commerce in human history,” states The Case for Preserving Net Neutrality, a report by AeA, which represents 2,500 companies from every corner of the high-tech industry.

In this latest brief on market competitiveness, the AeA calls on Congress to “safeguard the competitive nature of the Internet by allowing consumers and content providers to connect with each other in an open marketplace, providing consumers with equal access to all content.”

According to the report, the only way to do this is for Congress to prevent companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast from abusing their market power by imposing discriminatory new surcharges that favor the content from companies and Web sites that pay them the most.

Allowing the nation’s largest phone and cable companies to tilt the market in favor of larger and better funded content providers would “undermine the fundamental principles of open and free exchange of information across the network,” according to the AeA report.

Despite the spin now emanating from the phone and cable company PR firms, the threat is very real.

AT&T chief Edward Whitacre Jr. (pictured right), claimed last year that Internet content providers plan to start charging extra for use of “my lines.” BellSouth’s Chief Technology Officer, William Smith, told reporters that his firm should be able to charge content providers to prioritize their content. Verizon’s Chief Executive Ivan Seidenberg told the Wall Street Journal of company’s plans to start charging Web sites more so they “don’t sit on our network and chew up our capacity.”

Flat Out Lies

The report explodes the telco myth that content providers aren’t already paying for access, conservatively estimating that the largest service providers receive at least $13.1 billion annually in bandwidth fees from 7.3 billion business Internet subscribers.

This is direct contradiction to telco spinmeister Mike McCurry, who in an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun claimed that Google’s access to bandwidth doesn’t cost the company a dime — an assertion that Tech Dirt’s Michael Masnick called “a flat out lie.”

Neither McCurry (pictured right) nor the army of lobbyists that the phone and cable companies have unleashed upon Washington can be trusted in this argument against Net Neutrality.

Telcos already profit handsomely from charging companies for their share of bandwidth. Now, they want to add surcharges that are based on the ownership or source of content — a concept that would result in a tiered Internet, weighted towards the largest companies and against the sort of Web innovation that typically bubbles up from below.

According to the AeA report:

“By tiering the Internet based on who pays the most to prioritize their content, the telecom industry is creating a system of haves and have-nots: those that can afford the premium for preferred treatment and those that cannot.

“A tiered system for broadband services is already in place, but it is based on the bandwidth purchased by the consumer and content provider, who both are already paying for Internet access. This current system allows consumers equal access to any legal content they choose and gives even the smallest content provider the chance to compete in a robust marketplace. This system treats all packets equally.”

Companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast will stifle the competitive marketplace if they’re allowed to discriminate based on who can afford to pay their planned premiums.

The phone and cable companies seek to strip away the egalitarian idea on which the Internet was founded — which rewards the best concepts or Web sites — and shift power to the larger companies that can outbid competitors for preferential treatment.

The AeA report provides guidance for those in Congress who are willing to stand with the public and protect the Internet from such predatory and anti-competitive schemes.

Why has the United States fallen behind the rest of the world in accessible and affordable broadband service?

The answer, according to a report released by Free Press, the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union, is marketplace failures wrought by phone and cable companies’ near monopoly control of last-mile broadband markets.

The 44-page report, Broadband Reality Check II, exposes the truth behind America’s digital decline: A marketplace controlled by the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast has left Americans with higher prices, slower speeds and no meaningful competition for high-speed Internet service.

It exposes as myth the phone companies’ repeated claims that the U.S. has a diverse marketplace, with myriad broadband choices for the consumer.

It skewers the notion — put forth by telco executives and their high-paid shills — that “fierce competition” precludes Net Neutrality protections.

According to Broadband Reality Check II, a few cable and DSL providers account for 98 percent of the residential broadband market. Over 40 percent of U.S. ZIP codes have one or fewer DSL or cable modem providers providing service. In most cases, these are limited to services offered by just one or the other of the nation’s largest phone and cable companies, all of which have stated their steadfast opposition to preserving an even playing field on the Internet.

“Our markets lack the competition to bring lower prices, higher speeds, and universal access. Our policies lack the imagination and potency to create real change,” wrote the report’s author, Derek Turner, research director of Free Press. “Meanwhile, Americans pay more money for less service than a dozen other nations. A third of U.S households are still stuck with dial-up, and another third lack Internet access of any kind. Our broadband problem is becoming a crisis.”

Broadband Reality Check II also finds:

• The 14 other OECD nations saw higher overall net growth in broadband adoption than the United States from 2001 to 2005.
• Consumers in other countries enjoy broadband connections that are far faster and cheaper than what is available here. U.S. consumers pay nearly twice as much as the Japanese for connections that are 20 times as slow.
• U.S. broadband prices aren’t dropping: Cable modem prices are holding constant or rising, and DSL customers on average are getting less bandwidth per dollar than just a year ago.
• The market share of “third platform” alternatives like satellite, wireless and broadband over powerline technologies has actually decreased over the past five years.

The report contradicts the rosy picture painted by the Federal Communications Commission, by exposing the agency’s failure to rein in broadband monopolies — an industry-friendly regulatory approach that has left Americans with higher prices, slower speeds and no meaningful competition for high-speed Internet service.

To remedy America’s Broadband decline the report recommends that Congress “restore the non-discriminatory, open-access principles — such as Net Neutrality — that enabled the birth and historic proliferation of the Internet.”

This is the last thing the nation’s largest phone and cable companies want to hear. They have already spent more than $100 million on Washington lobbyists, ads and PR flacks to push legislation through Congress that will gut Net Neutrality and further consolidate their control of the marketplace.

In press releases after press release, public utterances and op-eds, these companies and their shills build their argument on a myth of competition.

Their script goes something like this:

• “Why would phone and cable companies ever discriminate online?” [They conveniently ignore AT&T, Comcast BellSouth and Verizon executives who have stated their intention to do just that.]
• “The marketplace for broadband is highly competitive.” [They cite FCC stats that have been widely discredited -- by Congress and, even, the FCC.]
• “If we discriminate online, consumers will simply choose another provider.” [They willfully turn a blind eye to thoroughly-researched data that show minimal to no other broadband choice in markets across the country.]
• “Net Neutrality legislation is heavy-handed new regulation.” [They ignore its history as one of the Internet's guiding regulatory principles, which has made the Web a dynamic engine for new ideas, innovation and free speech.]
• “Net Neutrality hurts consumers.” [They can't recall that every major consumer group in the country supports Net Neutrality legislation and opposes the phone and cable companies' stance on the issue.]

“The simple fact of the matter is that the average consumer is lucky to have two providers and many don’t even have that,” said Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America. “And what happens with two is that these corporations quickly figure out that it is not in their mutual interest to compete down prices and give consumers a better deal.”

Despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary, phone company shills — such as the those at the disingenuously named NetCompetition.org — continue to parrot claims that broadband choice is “diverse” and “expanding rapidly.” Yet, without real data to stand upon, these industry frontmen offer little more than a façade of lies, which they hope to prop up long enough to earn themselves yet another paycheck from AT&T.

Net Neutrality is hardly government intrusion into the open marketplace of the Internet. It is a simple rule that keeps Internet companies from exploiting a lack of competition at the consumer’s expense.

As more and more Americans come to the Side of Net Neutrality, Congress should abandon the shills and support it too.