If writing to Senators:                                If writing to House Representatives:
The Honorable (full name)                            The Honorable (full name)
(Room #) (name) Senate Office Building        —OR—     (Room #) (name) House Office Building
Washington, DC  20510    Washington, DC  20515


Date

Your name
Your company’s name
Your address line 1
Your address line 2
City, State, Zip

Dear Senator (last name):    —OR—      Dear Representative (last name):

As your constituent, with a vested interest in the protection of independent Internet service, I am deeply concerned about the telecommunications industry. It is currently besieged by the proposed mergers of AT&T/SBC and MCI/Verizon, Telecom Act re-write proposals, TV franchise legislation, and anti-municipal broadband bills. There are several reasons why you should not approve these proposals: unfavorable wallop to the economy; detrimental impact on competition; inimical outcome to independent Internet service providers (IISPs); and negative effects on consumers, small businesses, technology producers, and non-profits.

Unfavorable Wallop to the Economy

Local economies and taxes will be negatively affected by these proposals for several reasons. State franchise agreements for television and anti-municipality broadband bills will take jobs and taxes out of the community. If the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) can get state franchise rights, municipalities and counties will lose franchise fees and communications taxes.  

With the anti-municipality broadband bills like HR 2726, cities and towns will not be allowed to deploy their own broadband infrastructure. When the phone and cable companies don’t either, communities will be unable to compete in the global workplace. America depends heavily on her service-oriented economy and needs to be competitive in this global business environment. Americans are competing for jobs against hungry people in Asia with a broadband connection. Without municipal broadband access, this will be extremely difficult to do.

A tangential note is that the RBOCs fiber deployment is redlining, resulting in digital discrimination. Verizon is lighting FiOS in only the most affluent neighborhoods that already have DSL service.

A final blow to the economy will be lost jobs. The RBOCs have shed almost 100,000 employees in the last two years, and will shed another 35,000 with these mergers. In the current regulatory and anti-competitive climate, independent Internet companies will be closing—adding to the job losses. And these are jobs with significant salaries that contribute greatly to local economies through taxes and purchasing power.

Detrimental Impact on Competition

Perhaps the most powerful and far-reaching result of these proposed mergers would be a negative effect on competition. They will further limit competition in the ISP market, because fewer players mean less competition. How do you maintain competition if most of the players are removed?

The main result of this lessening of competition will be higher prices; aggressive pricing happens in highly competitive markets, not duopolies. Another result will be reduced innovation. As we’ve seen time and again, only when firms must compete for business do they truly invest in research and development. Remove the impetus for this—the fear of losing business to competitors—and you greatly reduce innovation. It was 7,000—not 10 or 20—ISPs that made Internet access possible for 200 million Americans. Competition presented these 7,000 with a choice: Provide excellent service, easy to use products, and reasonable prices or lose business. The choice was easy, and we all enjoyed the benefits.

Negative effects on IISPs

Besides reducing competition, these mergers will drive IISPs out of business. If the FCC gives DSL equal treatment as cable modem, I am out of business and my employees are out of work. How many IISPs will be able to negotiate a favorable commercial agreement with the RBOCs for DSL circuits? Today, with DSL services regulated and tariffed, the RBOCs sell at retail for the same prices as they sell wholesale to IISPs. Remove these regulations and tariffs and RBOCs will abandon IISP sales in favor of selling directly to end users. Thousands of jobs will be lost and over 7 million subscribers will be forced to switch to the TeleCable companies for Internet service—effectively removing their freedom of choice.

When the competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) lost UNE-P in December, the result was AT&T and MCI leaving the market. This action resulted in both less competition and higher rates for consumers, especially small business.

Negative effects on consumers, small businesses, technology producers, and non-profits

IISPs are a central part of our technology backbone, because they are the tech experts for their markets. The skilled front-line of Internet security and network management, IISPs are the experts that people turn to for tech help. IISPs were able to penetrate the market by providing not just Internet access, but instruction and value-added services. The TeleCable companies will not be able to provide this same local, hands-on assistance. Internet users will be less educated at the very time when they need to be more educated to fight the continuing proliferation of worms, virus problems, and identity theft—all major problems costing America billions of dollars annually.  

Without this valuable front line support, emerging technologies (VOIP, home networking, wi-fi, broadband) will not be able to penetrate the market. Consumers who still have problems programming their VCRs need IISPs to help them understand emerging technologies. What they don’t understand they are unlikely to buy. If IISPs are forced out of business, communities will be without this critical bridge to new technology, and both they and the technology producers will suffer as a result.

One last—but most important—group that will suffer as a result of this merger is non-profits. Many obtain free Internet access and technical support from IISPs and simply cannot afford to pay retail prices. Without this Internet access their operations will suffer, as will the people who depend on them.

I appreciate your taking the time to consider my position.  I believe that the American consumer has suffered enough loss of innovation and too many price increases as a result of corporate consolidation. Small businesses—the lifeblood of the economy—can’t compete with these corporate behemoths and have to close, meaning the loss of thousands of jobs. I don’t want to see this happen, and I hope you don’t, either.


Sincerely,


Your name

Contact information:

http://www.ii4a.org, email: isps@ii4a.org or phone 813-496-2122