WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AirBnb, Reddit, Shutterstock, Inc, Tumblr, Etsy (ETSY.O), Twitter (TWTR.N)
and a long list of small internet companies urged the Federal
Communications Commission on Monday to scrap a plan to roll back net
neutrality rules.
In a letter dated on Monday, the companies urged FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to reverse course and vote against changing the rules.
Pai,
a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump in January, unveiled
plans last week to scrap landmark 2015 rules intended to ensure a free
and open internet, moving to give broadband service providers sweeping
power over what content consumers can access. The FCC is set to vote on
Dec. 14.
The move was seen as a victory for big internet service providers such as AT&T Inc (T.N), Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N), which favored a repeal.
The
companies, which sent the letter on Cyber Monday to coincide with the
biggest online shopping day of the year, argued that slowing access to
content, called “throttling,” or blocking it altogether, would hurt the
U.S. economy.
“This would put small and
medium-sized businesses at a disadvantage and prevent innovative new
ones from even getting off the ground,” the companies said in the
letter.
Pai defended the change as a way to remove heavy-handed internet regulations.
“The
internet and companies like Twitter, which signed the letter, thrived
under the pre-2015 light-touch regulatory framework that governed
Internet access. Chairman Pai wants to return to that framework so that
we can increase investment in broadband networks and connect more
Americans to the services that these companies offer online,” FCC
spokesman Mark Wigfield said in a statement.
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