Senator Ron Wyden

WYDEN TESTIFIES ON NET NEUTRALITY
AT COMMERCE COMMITTEE HEARING

February 7, 2006

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), one of Congress’ leading advocates of responsible and consumer-friendly technology growth, today testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation about on the issue of internet neutrality.

Senator Wyden’s prepared testimony follows:

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden
Prepared Testimony before the Senate Committee
on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Hearing on Net Neutrality

Mr. Chairman, 10 years ago in this room a bipartisan group of Senators decided that while we had not invented the Internet we wanted to help it prosper.

Our bipartisan group determined that the Internet was being subjected to discriminatory taxation, and we wrote the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which really should have been called the Internet Nondiscrimination Act. The principle behind the bill was technological neutrality – you shouldn’t tax the online world differently that the off-line world.

The law has been a success, and in my view a significant catalyst for the Net’s growth.

Now there is another challenge facing the Net that also needs to be tackled in a bipartisan way. Powerful interests who own the pipes and access to the Internet are trying to break the Net. These special interests want to expand their control over Internet access to the limitless world of content, where consumers play online games, watch online tv and enjoy video.

At present, consumers use the high speed access to the Net that they have paid for to visit whatever content they want, whenever they want without having to worry about having a cable company or a phone company interfering with their use of the Net.

Some of these cable and phone companies are trying to discriminate in the delivery of content. They are saying that instead of making available to everyone the same content at the same price, they want to set up sweetheart arrangements to play favorites.

This is a fundamental shift in the way the Internet works. Small start up companies and scores of others have been able to start small and dream big because every user has had equal access to all websites.

I want to keep it that way. I will shortly introduce legislation that will make sure all information is made available on the same terms so that no bit is better than another one. First, it will assure that information from a company like J. Crew is not treated worse than information from a company like LL Bean. Second, it will assure that a company like Comcast that offers Internet access does not give preferential treatment to its own information bits compared to information bits from another company, like Yahoo. Third, broadband service providers should not be able to create private networks that are superior to the Internet access they offer consumers generally. These principles would prevent Internet access providers from tipping the competitive advantage toward their own services, such as phone calls over the Internet (Voip) or television over the Internet.

Consumer groups and the technology community are four-square behind the notion that neutrality is the best policy when it comes to the Internet, and I will continue to work closely with them on this legislation. I also look forward to working with the members of this Committee to make sure there is no discrimination against consumers on the network.

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