I live and work from a 900-square-foot house on a rural island in Puget sound. My wife's grandparents built this house themselves; they were only able to do so because FDR’s Rural Electrification Act gave this little plot of land power, and common carrier legislation ensured that communication with neighbors and far-away friends and family was easy and affordable.

Fifty years later, here I sit, working remotely for a startup called Cloudinary that builds image-and-video delivery infrastructure for the web. Cloudinary powers hundreds of thousands of visually-rich sites across the internet and employs almost a hundred people – and it could never have gotten started without the even playing field provided by strong protections for net neutrality.

I could not live and work in this family home, remotely, without strong protections for net neutrality. A fair internet where my tiny ISP is able to compete with the likes of CenturyLink on an even playing field is necessary for me to do the work that I do, from the place that I do it.

For me, for my company, and for so many others who share some aspect of my story: please reject Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to gut net neutrality.

Thank you,
Eric Portis