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The SavetheInternet.com Coalition today urged Congress to press FCC Commissioners for their plans to ensure that the Internet become faster, more open and accessible to all Americans.

All five FCC Commissioners will testify on Wednesday before the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Members of our coalition have asked subcommittee chair Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) to put Net Neutrality atop the agenda — with a particular focus on urging FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to clarify his sometimes opaque views on the issue.

AT&T’s Ed Whitacre chats up FCC Chairman Kevin Martin

Chairman Martin doesn’t seem to understand why we need to prevent big phone and cable companies from discriminate against Internet content. Nor has he sufficiently explained why the U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the world in broadband services.

Cable and telephone companies spent more that $175 million last year to persuade people like Martin and members of Congress to gut Net Neutrality protections, but their lobbying couldn’t overcome widespread public support for the nondiscrimination rules that enabled the Internet to become an unprecedented vehicle for free speech and economic innovation.

“The Internet as we know it is a platform for free speech and artistic expression because of the fact that it has operated neutrally from the very beginning,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, president and CEO of Media Access Project. “I hope that the committee will press Chairman Martin on why he wants to change what has worked so well so far.”

“AT&T didn’t have to agree to the Net Neutrality terms, but it did,” said Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge. Sohn was referring to AT&T’s agreement at the end of 2006 to respect Net Neutrality as a condition of its merger with BellSouth. “The rest of the industry, and the FCC, should accept the reality that AT&T’s conduct will be good for the country.”

There is enormous grassroots energy across the country for preserving the Internet as a level playing field. The FCC needs to be responsive to these widespread public concerns and not just to the pleas of phone and cable industry lobbyists.

Over the last three weeks, SavetheInternet.com has organized 20 “in-district” meetings where hundreds of activists urged their elected representatives and senators to support Net Neutrality. Small business leaders, community organization heads and others came forth to call on their elected representatives to protect them against corporations that have threatened to control which Web sites people can access.

The “in-district” meetings continue the grassroots momentum that saw Net Neutrality supporters deliver SavetheInternet.com petitions in 26 cities nationwide last August, urging senators to support a free and open Internet. More than 1.5 million people have signed the petition at SavetheInternet.com.

“Will the new Congress meet the challenge tomorrow to help guide FCC Chairman Kevin Martin away from the special-interest policies favored by his predecessor and toward those that will help all Americans achieve a universal broadband future with a free and open Internet?” said Amina Fazlullah, U.S. PIRG staff attorney. “That’s the important question.”

Stay tuned to this blog for complete coverage of the hearings.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.