- A bill just introduced in Congress would take away the
right of cities and towns across the country to provide citizens with universal,
low-cost Internet access.
-
- Giant cable and telephone companies don,t want any competition
-- which might actually force them to offer lower prices, higher speeds
and service to rural and urban areas.
-
- U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) -- a former telephone
company executive -- has introduced a bill (HR 2726) that would let cable
and telecom companies shut down municipal and community efforts to offer
broadband services.
-
- Click here: You can stop this outrageous bill. Send a
message to your representative now.
-
- Next, forward this message to everyone you know ...
-
- No less than the future of all communications is at stake.
In a few years, television, telephone, radio and the Web will be accessed
through a high-speed internet connection. Low-cost alternatives to telephone
(DSL) and cable monopolies are emerging across the country, as cities,
towns, nonprofits and community groups build low-cost "Community Internet"
and municipal broadband systems.
-
- Companies like SBC, Verizon and Comcast have been introducing
laws state by state that would prohibit municipal broadband, undercut local
control and prevent competition. But we've been fighting back -- and winning.
-
- An alliance of public interest groups, local officials,
high-tech innovators and organized citizens have defeated anti-municipal
broadband measures in nine of the 13 states where they've been introduced
this year.
-
- What the industry couldn't pass in the states, they're
trying to push through in Washington. Sessions' bill -- the "Preserving
Innovation in Telecom Act" (an Orwellian title if there ever was one)
-- would prevent state and local governments from providing "any telecommunications
service, information service or cable service" anywhere a corporation
offers a similar service.
-
- Congressman Sessions worked for telephone giant SBC for
16 years, and his wife currently serves as a director of Cingular Wireless,
an SBC subsidiary. SBC and its employees have been Sessions' second-biggest
career patron, pouring more than $75,000 into his campaign coffers.
-
- We can stop this legislation and send a clear message
to Congress that local communities -- not the giant telephone and cable
companies -- should determine their own communications needs. But you must
act now.
-
- http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/
- send a letter opposing HR 2726 -- and forward this message
to everyone you know, asking them to do the same.
-
- Onward,
-
- Josh Silver
- Executive Director
- Free Press
- www.freepress.net
-
- P.S. For all of the latest news on Community Internet
and municipal broadband, visit the Free Press Web site at www.freepress.net/communityinternet.
-
- P.P.S. Want to get more involved in bringing Community
Internet to your hometown? Join the Free Press Action Squad at www.freepress.net/action/squad/signup.php.
|
