Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. KING. Mr. President, I love history, and we have been here before. We were in exactly this place in 1886. Let me read you a quote from Senator Thomas W. Palmer of Michigan on this floor in 1886. I am going to try to channel my 19th century Senator voice:

Among the servants of our civilization none have approached in efficiency the railway. It has annihilated distance; it has not only made the wilderness blossom as the rose, but also has enabled the rose to be readily exchanged for the products of cities. . . . These are the modern highways for commerce, and should differ only in extent and facilities from their predecessors back to the days of the Roman roads.

The point is, in the 1800s, the railroads were in a position, because of their unique nature as the highways of the time, to strangle competition and hold small businesses hostage. The situation today with the internet is almost identical, and the Senate is now going to grapple with a rapidly growing but mature industry that is central to economic opportunity in our country. Unfortunately, in both the cases of the railroads and today, the internet, often, there are players who have the means and incentives to engage in discriminatory pricing or prioritization due to the frequent existence of last-mile monopolies. It is the exact same situation.

My favorite quote from Mark Twain is that ``history doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes.'' In this case, it is repeating itself.

Back in 1886, here is what the Select Committee on Interstate Commerce said about the causes of complaint against the railroad system.

No. 1, ``that . . . rates are unreasonably high at noncompeting points.''

That means small towns--rural America--at noncompeting points, which is the same as what is happening with the internet. We see today, particularly in rural areas, that there is only one provider of the truly high-speed broadband that is needed to run an online business and its expenses.

Here is point No. 2 from 1886: ``The effect of the prevailing policy of railroad management''--you can put in internet management--``is, by an elaborate system of secret special rates, rebates, drawbacks, and concessions, to foster monopoly, to enrich favored shippers, and to prevent free competition in many lines of trade in which the item of transportation is an important factor.''

This is exactly what we are worried about with the internet. It could come roaring back if we don't reimpose net neutrality rules. It is not hard to imagine that if paid prioritization is allowed, which would have a customer on the pipes of the internet be able to get a faster speed, it will cement the dominance of Facebook and Amazon, which are great companies, but it will stifle the development of smaller competitors who can't afford the access fees.

One of the great things about the internet is its low barriers to entry. If, indeed, the major internet providers are able to impose barriers to entry, it will, by definition, stifle small businesses across the country. That has been the glory of the internet; the enabling of the development of small businesses throughout the length and breadth of this country.

Here is another one from 1886: ``Railroad corporations have improperly engaged in lines of business entirely distinct from that of transportation, and that undue advantages have been afforded to business enterprises in which railroad officials were interested.''

In other words, the railroads were getting into other lines of business which they could then favor on the railroads. That is exactly what we are worried about now. Large telecommunications companies are becoming vertically integrated with content companies. There is a clear potential for conflicts of interest. Net neutrality rules are so important for preventing any attempts of existing incumbent carriers to favor the delivery of their own content and degrade the delivery of competitors' content. This is exactly the kind of thing we are worried about.

Right now, anyone with a broadband connection has equal access. General Motors or Amazon or Exxon or Facebook has the same access to the internet as somebody who is starting a new company in his garage, and that is why the internet has been such a dynamic job creator across the country. Yet, in December of 2017, the Federal Communications Commission repealed the idea of net neutrality and basically said to the large providers: It is open season. You can do it. Do whatever you want. They have unenforceable rules, and small businesses and startups will undoubtedly, ultimately, be the losers. This is just the reality.

Quite often, we have issues around here that are in shades of gray, that we have to think about, and that can be argued on both sides. Reasonable people can differ. In this case, the people who repealed net neutrality are all wrong. There is no good argument for repealing rules that simply keep the pipes open for everyone just as the Interstate Commerce Commission in the 1880s was designed to keep the railroads open for everyone.

This is a little complicated because it is the repealing of a repeal. What we are talking about is a CRA that would repeal the repeal by the FCC of net neutrality rules. It is the ultimate small business bill. It will allow small businesses to compete without limitations, and small online companies and low-income consumers will not be left in the slow lane. Innovation will continue to blossom, and opportunity will have equal access to this incredibly important economic engine.

It is important to understand that what this bill does, in my view-- or what net neutrality does--is not government regulation, which is what you hear: ``This is government regulation.'' Somebody is going to have the control of the pipes. The question is, Should it be the people who own the pipes so they can do whatever they want and discriminate against small businesses or other carriers and favor their own content or should the government simply be the referee that says, ``No. This is going to be equal''? I think net neutrality is deregulatory in the sense that all it does is protect the neutrality and the openness of the internet to competitors across the country.

I had a roundtable in Maine, on Friday, to which I invited small businesses and ISPs, internet service providers. The opinion--the response--was unanimous in that this is absolutely crucial to the survival and the vitality of these businesses. We have a small company in Maine called Certify. It has 150 employees. It is a web-based solution for people who keep track of their receipts for business travel. It is a nationwide business. It has 10,000 clients across the country, but it is all about having equal access to the internet. It has 2 million users around the globe, and it is based in Portland, ME. That is the power of the internet. We don't want that business to be choked off by a large competitor who can pay preferential rates and make my companies in Maine pay higher rates and therefore unable to compete.

A little company called Big Room Studios and Yarn Corporation are two software development virtual reality companies based in Maine. They are dependent on continued access to an open internet. Their founder got in touch with me. He firmly believes that without net neutrality rules, there is a real risk that startup companies like his will face barriers to entry that will keep them from reaching their full potential.

Another great example is Dream Local Digital, a company in Rockland, ME, where the employees and customers are all over the place. It is based in a wonderful town in Maine, on the coast, Rockland. They have customers in 65 cities. It is a digital marketing company serving customers throughout the country, primarily small businesses, all connected through the internet. Led by a visionary named Shannon Kinney, their core existence and business model rely on the open internet enabling a significant number of employees to work from home in 9 different communities in Maine and 10 other States. They have to have open access to the internet.

This isn't a debate about ISPs and consumers. The smaller ISPs that were at my roundtable and that I have heard from around the country feel that an open internet is as important to them as it is to their customers. They support net neutrality.

OTELCO, a rural broadband company, provides voice over internet protocol, or VoIP, services, and they are worried that larger competitors can demand paid prioritization fees in order to maintain service quality, and that would be the end of their business.

This is an incredible moment in the Senate, and I don't think this is a political issue. I think this is a small business issue. This is a public issue. The crucial point is, who is going to control the future of the internet? Is it going to be the owners of the large pipes, or is it going to be the public? Can the internet maintain the quality of service, the openness of service, the fairness of service that has been a part of it, that has allowed it to grow so fast and become so important in our economy?

Again, the idea of net neutrality is really simple. It is that everybody has a fair chance at a fair speed at a fair price and that the owners of the pipes can't discriminate between certain businesses and those that can pay more and those that are bigger or those that are affiliated with the owners of the pipes. It is all about the small businesses of this country.

This is a real opportunity for us to do something important for the small businesses of America, and I believe this resolution is one that will restore us to a place where small businesses will be able to compete and blossom and prosper in the future of this country.

I urge support of the CRA that I understand will come to a vote in about a week. I believe this is absolutely essential to the development of the internet-based economy, in rural areas particularly. To go back to 1886, this body stepped up at that time, controlled the dangerous monopolies of the railroads, established the principle of nondiscrimination and common carry, and that is all we are talking about today.

Mark Twain was right: History doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes.

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