"Hands Off" Statement on SaveTheInternet Lobbying Call
April 26, 2007
The SaveTheInternet coalition today held a press briefing on the status of neutrality regulation legislation in the Congress. In response, the following comment may be attributed to Mike McCurry and Christopher Wolf, co-chairs of the Hands Off the Internet coalition (www.HandsOff.org):
“During the past year, public debate about the Internet has shifted noticeably away from regulation and toward the urgent need to improve consumers’ high-speed choices. America has already fallen far behind much of Europe and Asia in broadband deployment and regulating high-speed access for a nonexistent problem does nothing at all to increase high-speed choices. The key is to continue the current massive effort to deploy new high-speed systems. That promotes jobs and competitive pricing while eliminating the whole rationale for expensive federal regulations that shift costs onto ordinary Net users.”
Today’s lobbying call came just days after The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy issued a white paper on broadband development entitled, “Internet Traffic Prioritisation: An Overview.” The report took direct aim at neutrality regulations, noting that “From the current state of the discussions it seems premature for governments to become involved at the level of network-to-network traffic exchange and demand neutral packet treatment for content providers.”
The report is available at:
www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/63/38405781.pdf
The Hands Off the Internet coalition is a Washington, DC-based coalition of companies and nonprofit organizations that believes the Internet has flourished because government has not tried to regulate it. Members include Alcatel, AT&T, 3M, the National Association of Manufacturers, FiberControl, and Cinergy Communications. Nonprofit members include Citizens Against Government Waste, the American Conservative Union and the National Black Chamber of Commerce.