March 6, 2019
IIA issued the following statement in response to the House Dems’ launch of the Save the Internet Act today, which would entail a return to Title II for broadband:
IIA strongly supports the adoption of legislation that will assure core principles of net neutrality: no blocking, no throttling, no paid prioritization. But we strongly disagree with the ‘back-to-the-future’ legislation announced by some members of Congress this morning, that common carrier rules first adopted for the era of monopoly telephones should be applied to the Internet. For over 20 years, including in the past year, the broadband internet has been regulated in a bipartisan consensus according to the light-touch rules first adopted during the Clinton Administration. Those rules helped the internet grow exponentially. For two years, we had a brief experiment with intrusive regulation, which the proposed bill seeks to restore, during which investment fell. With light-touch regulation now restored, network operators are deploying new and faster technologies at an accelerated rate. We can have both strong net neutrality principles and reasonable light touch, pro-investment regulation that will enable America to meet the challenge of newer technologies and lead the world in the deployment of 5G.”