BY TIMOTHY LAROCHE
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CLAREMONT — When the Sullivan County Humane Society took in more than a dozen cats last year that had been abandoned in a single crate, social media posts escalated the case to statewide attention.
In the months since the story began circulating, a web-based outreach campaign has led to many of the cats being adopted.
It’s an anecdote that Humane Society Vice President Sherry Bell says illustrates the key role that the internet has played in furthering the society’s goals to shelter animals.
“With the internet and everything, getting their face out there helped get them adopted,” Bell said of the 14 abandoned cats.
Bell and other local nonprofit leaders joined Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-NH, on Tuesday in an “internet crawl” across Claremont, sharing similar stories about the ways that they use the internet in their daily operations.
“We really want people to understand that internet access is really the name of the game in 21st century connectivity,” Hassan said.
The tour brought Hassan to REMIX, Jozach Jewelers and the Sullivan County Humane Society before concluding at The Common Man Inn.
At each stop, Hassan spoke out against recent regulatory changes repealing net-neutrality rules.
“The internet is a powerful tool that helps support our innovative businesses and boost economic development in Claremont and across New Hampshire,” Hassan said.
“Reinstating net neutrality and expanding access to broadband are both essential to helping to ensure that all of our entrepreneurs and businesses… have the opportunity to reap the benefits of the internet and thrive,” the senator said.
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 purpose of establishing “net neutrality” — the statement that all information would be treated equally.
The order’s repeal reverts regulation of the internet to pre-2015 rulings, giving internet service providers greater leverage over the market. The net-neutrality repeal opens the door to “throttling,” Hassan said, the practice in which ISPs deny or slow bandwidth to their competitors.
“The notion that some people are going to pay a greater fee or some business will pay more is antithetical to the ideas of an open internet,” Hassan said.
Through the stops on the crawl, Hassan also noted that expanding broadband coverage in rural New Hampshire will be a priority of her office.
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