With the internet having become an integral part of our Americans lives, it is necessary to protect and preserve free, open and nondiscriminatory internet access for all of us. Internet Service Providers are tasked with connecting users with the content and services available on the internet, not with regulating and managing what content users are able to connect to and how they connect.
It would be unacceptable for a phone company to redirect phone calls from one business to another and would be unfair for a phone company to charge different rates for equal service to two equal businesses. It would also be scandalous for a phone company to record customers phone conversations and then sell that data in order to inject advertisements into a customers telephone conversation.
In the same manner, it is and should be unacceptable for an Internet Service Provider to redirect requests from one website to another, and for an ISP to provide more bandwidth when requesting one site over another. It should be illegal for an ISP to record a customer’s web history and later sell that history to advertisers in order to inject targeted ads into the pages a customer has requested.
Title II places restrictions on phone companies that both protect consumers and create fertile ground for a healthy and robust communication infrastructure. In the same manner the public needs restrictions on ISP to both protect consumers from ISP overreach and create a healthy and fertile internet communication infrastructure that benefits all.