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To: President Donald Trump, The United States House of Representatives, and The United States Senate

Safeguard the internet

This petition has been created to safeguard and preserve the future of the internet. The principle of network neutrality, where internet service providers and governments treat all data on the Internet as equal is in jeopardy. The National Science Foundation created the first internet backbone in 1987 (2) using public money, which was then given to other commercial Internet Service Providers. These companies were then given the subsidies to spread fiber lines all throughout the country, with intent to increase availability to consumers. In many cases this did not happen.

Today access to the internet is without question a utility, where the resource is required by people to function in our society. Without access how will a person look for work, pay their bills and stay in contact with others?

Comcast and Verizon have demonstrated a willingness to take complete advantage of their ability to charge people more for access (1). This is setting a dangerous precedence where a consumer can be double-charged for access. For example I pay for my internet connection and also for Netflix, yet Netflix is required to pay the ISP for the privilege of using bandwidth that I have already paid for.

When Comcast purchases Time Warner, they will have no reason to upgrade their infrastructure any further, as they will become the biggest ISP in the United States. Decreased competition has lead AT&T to be more concerned with using their capital to battle Google than improve their infrastructure for better and faster access to their network. Verizon already throttles the internet based on websites (although they later retracted that statement) All of the other broadband Internet Service Providers just resell one of those three main players, well soon to be 2.

In the 1980 the United States started the internet and was the only country that had access to it. In the 1990s the United States was considered the top country in the world in term of broadband competition, these days we get some of the slowest service in the most developed nations for the highest prices.
We all pay taxes, I say access to the internet in today’s modern world has become a necessity, I think it is time the government declare Eminent domain and let the FCC run the internet. This proposed has several benefits:

• Improved network function (one service provider)
• Increases jobs (as networks will constantly be improving all over the country)
• The entire country will have internet access
• Major player in the internet bandwidth global scales once again

1. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-agrees-to-pay-comcast-to-improve-its-streaming-2014-02-23-124491012)
2. http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/textonly/80s.jsp

Why is this important?

This petition has been created to safeguard and preserve the future of the internet.