Subject: Response from Senator Tillis
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Dear Ms. Main:
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts about internet regulation. I appreciate hearing from you and welcome the opportunity to respond.
According to industry metrics, private investment in the internet has exceeded $1.5 trillion dollars since 1996, leading to the creation of millions of jobs, economic prosperity, and a society where the accessibility of information is at a level unimaginable merely two or three decades ago.
In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission voted in secret to reclassify broadband internet access services as "telecommunication services" under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. This allowed the government to regulate the internet under the same rules designed for telephone companies in the 1930s, hampering innovation and growth in that industry for more than fifty years.
The FCC's 2015 edict requires Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to treat all data traveling over their networks equally, rather than allowing ISPs to customize service offerings with their users and compete for more customers on the basis of quality and price, even if those service offerings include treating some data differently. This essentially imposes a one-size-fits-all business model on the internet and represents an unprecedented government power grab to control and regulate the internet.
I support Chairman Pai's desire to overturn the FCC's 2015 mandates, which clearly run contrary to Congressional intent, to better allow Congress to dictate appropriate oversight of the internet through new, thoughtful legislative initiatives. In fact, I cosponsored S. 993, the Restoring Internet Freedom Act, which would scrap the FCC's ill-founded interpretation and net neutrality mandates.
Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me again about other issues that are important to you.
Sincerely,
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| Thom Tillis U.S. Senator | |
