On February 23rd, residents from Hollister will deliver a petition to Tom Wheeler, FCC Commissioner and President Barack Obama signed by at least 230 people.
The petition was created on MoveOn’s petition site and states, “Stop the FCC from making small ISPs comply with Title II public utility rules. This is not Net Neutrality. It is a power grab to give the big phone/cable providers a strong monopoly and saddle all American Internet customers with a 16.8% tax.”
On February 26 FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is calling a vote that will implement regulations that will reclassify all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as public utilities. This may seem reasonable. However, it will essentially shut down most small ISPs serving rural areas. We don’t have the resources to comply with the Title II reporting requirements. If that doesn’t bother you, this might: The Universal Service Fund (renamed the Connect America Fund) is a tax that will apply to every Internet access customer in the land. It is currently 16.8% If the regulation is allowed to go into effect, your $40 Internet bill will go to $46.72. This money will be taken from all Internet users and selectively given (free of charge) to selected ISPs who will use it to build our their networks and replace your small, local ISP that they will have essentially driven out of business. Once Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and a few other big players have taken over, they will be free to increase Internet access charges– they will have no competition. When you use up your monthly allotment of 10 Gigabytes of data (About 2 Netflix movies), and they start charging you for going over your data allotment, your bill won’t be $200 for this “abuse” it will have the CAF tax applied so that you will be paying $233.60! The Internet has grown to its current usefulness through an approach of little government regulation as a Title I Information service. Please sign this petition and prevent this outrageous power grab.
To read the petition go to: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/save-small-internet-service
MoveOn’s online organizing platform was created to allow progressive individuals and organizations to run their own online campaigns.
I, George Fendler, owner of Central Coast Internet in Hollister, prepared this petition at MoveOn.org to try to stop the bulldozer that is trying to drive small businesses out of business.