Net Neutrality Campaign Hits Chapel St.

Connecticut needs an open internet for its startups to keep up with bigger names in the digital economy, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal told a roomful of New Haven techies Thursday.

Touring the Chapel Street offices of SeeClickFix, the online platform for citizens to report problems to local government, Blumenthal kicked off a final push to save net neutrality, the rules that guarantee internet providers treat all Web content the same way.

While much of the recent debate about net neutrality has focused on consumer experience, like how fast they’d be able to stream a movie on Netflix or make a purchase on Amazon, Blumenthal focused on the regulations’ effect on emerging businesses. The set of rules “guarantees that people will have equal access,” he said. “Net neutrality says the Internet has to be ... a level playing field. Everybody has to have equal access, speed and cost. Everybody should be guaranteed it, innovators as well as the big Fortune 500s. They all ought to have an equal shot.”

Timing his visit with the publication by the Federal Communications Commission of new rules, which are set to take effect in late April, Blumenthal said he needs to convince one Republican senator to cross the aisle.

FCC adopted formal net neutrality rules in 2015 that kept the Internet working as it always had. The regulations prohibited internet service providers — an increasingly consolidated group that includes AT&T, Comcast and Frontier —  from varying the download rates to different websites. Activists worry that, without the rules, those cable companies could prioritize high-speed access to some websites, slow down competitors or even block content altogether. Startups, in particular, fear they’ll have to pay to reach customers, if they have the money at all.

Now the FCC has changed course and decided to undo the rules. Blumenthal said he wants Congress to stop that effort.

“To a lot of people it’s an issue that’s hard to understand. ​‘Net? Neutrality? What does that mean?’” Blumenthal said. ​“Really, think of it in terms of open access to the Internet: without tolls, without extra charges, without preference on timing, without any discrimination.”

Those protections are particularly important for startups, Blumenthal went on. ​“To start a startup takes some courage. You’re taking a leap; you’re committing resources. If you have obstacles in your way that are put there by potential competitors, whose business you’re going to disrupt, it’s a lot harder.”

Last December, led by Trump’s newly appointed chairman Ajit Pai, the FCC voted to gut most of those protections. The Republicans argued the Obama-era regulations overstepped the FCC’s purpose, stifling investment in the broadband industry. The FCC kept a requirement that cable companies disclose how they treat Internet traffic, enabling other agencies, like the Federal Trade Commission, to take enforcement action. Democrats argued they were losing a vital safeguard against monopolies.

In a last-ditch campaign, Blumenthal is asking Congress to overturn the FCC’s recent decision. Through the Congressional Review Act, he needs only a bare majority of 51 votes. With pledges from all 49 Democrats and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, Blumenthal needs to shake out just one more vote.

“We’re trying to raise the alarm, raise awareness, raise outrage with a step that would be in the wrong direction,” Blumenthal said.

Without net neutrality, startups will eventually have a harder time entering the market, said Ben Berkowitz, SeeClickFix’s CEO. He called the FCC’s repeal an ​“attack” on entrepreneurship.

“We’re a company built on the open internet. I saw graffiti on my neighbor’s building and then was able to work off tools that Google and open-source developers had built [to create] a company that’s really changing how we interact with government,” Berkowitz said. ​“All of those things are lost when you’re in an environment where there is preferential treatment for bigger companies. Long term, it could really stagnate innovation in this country.”

Blumenthal said incubating tech startups is particularly urgent in Connecticut, where the economy needs to replace the lost manufacturing jobs of prior generations. ​“You guys are our future,” he said. ​“In the Northeast, we’re not going to build a new Eastman-Kodak. There are industries that are gone, and this is really going to be our future.”

If Blumenthal fails to secure any more support, the matter will go to the courts. Twenty-one state attorneys general, including Connecticut’s George Jepsen, sued to block the FCC’s repeal from taking effect.