Big Telecom Wants To Squash The Free Internet, Starting Now

[Commentary] Congressional Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives are sending hostile letters to the Federal Communications Commission all in the cause of - making sure that AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and the rest can run the Internet the way they want to and to hell with the way the Internet has developed for the past 10 years. That's worth spending millions of lobbying, campaign and ad dollars on, don't you think? And the FCC hasn't even issued its proposed rules yet -- that doesn't happen until Thursday (Oct. 22), much less taken public comment, nor made a final decision. Surely this is something of which Big Telecom is very, very afraid. The point of all this activity is to cow the FCC into proposing weak and ineffective Net Neutrality rules -- in essence to fix the game before it gets started. That's why there is this unprecedented outpouring of lobbying and letters ahead of time. Start the pressure early. Keep it on late, and the FCC and the White House will cave. That's the Big Telecom strategy. Who is more worthy of our elected representatives advocacy? Big telecom companies which want to exercise control over something they never controlled? Or the millions of people who are used to an Internet in which they, not big media, make decisions about how to go about their online lives, whether investing millions of dollars, uploading a video or just listening to music. So far, it's the first batch. And unfortunately, the misguided members of Congress aren't alone in their campaign to destroy today's Internet. Telecom industry organizations, labor and even some state governors and civil rights groups, are getting in on the act, urging the FCC, when it proposes rules on Thursday, to allow AT&T, Comcast and Verizon to have unlimited power to do what they want to online.