BY TIMOTHY LAROCHE
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CLAREMONT — Several community and business leaders are expected to join a U.S. senator today on a”crawl” to help protect consumers from discrimination by internet providers.
Following statements critical of the Federal Communication Commission’s decision to end net-neutrality rules, Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., will join local business and non-profit leaders in an “Internet Community Crawl.”
The crawl is slated to begin at 2 p.m. at REMIX at 1 Pleasant St., before moving next door to Jozach Jewelers at 2:25 p.m., the Sullivan County Human Society at 14 Tremont St. at 2:40 p.m. and ending at The Common Man Inn at 21 Water St. at 3:05 p.m.
Greater Claremont Chamber of Commerce Director Elyse Crossman and Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman are scheduled to attend.
At each stop along the crawl, speakers will touch on the ways that local small businesses use the internet to further operations. A campaign to reinstate net-neutrality rules is also slated to be a focus of the event.
“In an increasingly interconnected world and global economy, we must include in our discussion of infrastructure not just roads, bridges and waterways, but also high-speed internet access,” Hassan said in a February letter to the White House.
“While the vast majority of Americans have access to high-speed internet service, there is a stark disparity between urban and rural America,” the senator wrote.
“This digital divide puts many rural Americans at risk of being left out of critical technological advancements and economic gains.”
On Dec. 14, 2017, FCC commissioners and Chairman Ajit Pai voted to repeal the Open Internet Order, an April 2015 order to reclassify the internet as a telecommunications service rather than information service.
As a telecommunications service, the internet was subject to greater government regulations, with the stated purpose of establishing “net neutrality” — ostensibly meaning that all information would be treated equally.
The order’s repeal reverted regulation of the internet to pre-2015 frameworks, giving internet service providers greater leverage over the market.
Critics of repealing net-neutrality rules cited the practice of “throttling,” in which ISPs drastically reduce streaming speeds for websites advertising rival services, as a danger of the repeal.
“Net neutrality rules are essential to protect consumers from discriminatory practices online and to ensure small businesses, like those in New Hampshire, are competing on a level playing field,” Hassan said in a Jan. 10 statement.
On the other hand, proponents of the repeal argue that telecommunications regulations stifle investments into internet infrastructure.
“As a result of these rules, small ISPs faced new regulatory burdens associated with common carrier compliance,” Pai said in his proposal to repeal the net-neutrality rules.
“Innovative providers hoping to offer their customers new, even free services had to fear a Washington bureaucracy that might disapprove and take enforcement action against them,” Pai said.
The event is organized, in part, by the Internet Association, a lobbying firm that bills itself as the “only trade association that exclusively represents leading global internet companies on matters of public policy.”
The organization touts lobbying efforts for such internet behemoths as Amazon, Netflix and Google.
Campaign finance data from the organization’s political action committee disclosed that it spent $15,000 so far this year between three candidates — $5,000 each to Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash.; Sen. John Coryn, R-Texas; and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
While Rodgers and Wyden both lambasted net-neutrality repeal efforts, Coryn cosponsored the Restoring Internet Freedom Act that would permanently prevent telecommunications regulations from resurfacing.
The bill is under deliberation in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
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