NET NEUTRALITY PROTECTS A MARKEPLACE OF IDEAS

12-29 Today's letters to the editor of the Wall Street Journal contains a letter signed by a Democratic Senator, Byron Dorgan, a Republican Senator, Olympia Snow and the President of the Christian Coalition of America, Roberta Combs on a topic critical to all HubPages participants: the importance of protecting Net neutrality from the threats posed by AT&T and other giant telecom companies. Here is the letter

In regard to your Dec. 15 editoril "Merger Hold Up": You state tht net neutrality lost "resoundingly" in the lst Congress. Yet the Snowe-Dorgan amendment, offered during Senate Commerce Committee consideration of major telecommunications legislation in June, was defeated by an 11-11 tie vote. And the underlying legislation was never brought to the Senate floor in large part because it did not include a meaningful net neutrality provision.

To further argue that net neutrality "has nothing todo with the merits of [the AT&T] merger" is to ignore statements by AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre, who has publiscly indicated his intent to discriminate and act as a gtekeeper between Internet content and consumers. He was quoted in Business Week as saying, in regard to Internet comapnies: "they don't have any fiber out there. They don't have any wires. They don't have anything. They use my lines for free--and that's bull."

To allow any company to pick winners and losers completely undermines the open structure that has brought true innovtion to the Internet. We must guarantee continued "neutrality" so that success on the Web is determined by the erit of one's ideas--not by one's ability to purchase access from gorporTE GIANTS.

Of course this principle should be guidepost for the FCC when they decide on this merger because as the father of the Internet, Vint Cerf, testified before Congress: The Internet is "innovation without permission."

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan

Sen. Olympia J. Snowe

Roberta Combs, President, Christian Coalition of America

COMMENT: I wonder if Mr. Whitacre has forgotten about the monthly fees AT&T charges it's customers to use "his" wires and fiber?

Urge your Senator and Corgressman to support Net Neutrality!