Hi, my name is Corey Smith and I'm a concerned citizen.

I'm reaching out to express my disapproval that the FCC is trying to kill net neutrality and the strong Title II oversight of Internet Service Providers. 

Preserving an open internet is crucial for fair and equal access to the resources and information available on it. 

Allowing the creation of tiered access or fast-lanes by removing these oversights steps away from the FCCs responsibility to protect consumers of telecommunications services by redefining internet service as not being a “telecommunications service.” 

It is a legal sleight-of-hand and those who proposed this and vote for it should be ashamed of themselves. They are “protecting consumers” by disavowing responsibility to do just that. They are providing for “better regulation” by giving authority to the FTC which has no regulatory authority.

They are walking away from the clear statutory mandate to oversee telecommunications services by cleverly saying local internet delivery is not a telecommunications service.

These changes would create a kind of false scarcity in bandwidth to raise prices that should instead be fixed by competition in more access to multiple broadband ISP providers.

Even a report by the FCC this April shows that 58% of Americans have access to zero or one broadband ISP, and 87% of Americans only have access to two or fewer. (https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2017/db0503/DOC-344499A1.pdf)

If the FCC is left without authority over broadband ISPs, Comcast, Verizon and others could double their prices overnight, and there wouldn’t be anything the FCC or any other agency could do about it.

I urge the FCC to not let the statutory mandate placed in them by the people slip through their hands because of a short-term chair with a political or corporate agenda.

Thank you for your time and attention.
Corey Smith