On the recordMay 17, 2017
I thank Mr. Franken for his leadership on this issue. He is a person who understands the content industry and has been a fierce defender of people's ability to view content online, people's ability to express themselves online, and understands that a fair and open media marketplace is central to our democracy. I want to address one assertion that was made by the proponents of repealing net neutrality; that is, that somehow the investment climate under net neutrality was harmed. They say there is some reason to believe that under net neutrality, the investment climate was diminished, but the Internet Association published research today that addressed this very issue, and their findings show that since 2015, when the rules went into place, telecommunications investment has actually increased. ISPs and their consumers are enjoying historically low production costs and innovation has increased. Free Press also published a report on this question earlier this week, and they found that investment in broadband by publicly traded companies actually went up after net neutrality went into place. Here is what the research director at the Free Press had to say: ``If investment is the FCC's preferred metric, then there is only one possible conclusion--net neutrality and Title II are a smashing success.'' Here is the point. The internet is not broken. There are parts of the economy that are not working well. We struggle with manufacturing.…
Source
govinfo.gov




