The stimulus bill is our best chance to get meaningful government investment in faster, affordable, and open internet.
This is an action alert put out by the Free Press Action fund, a non profit media reform organization that is “fighting to insure stimulus funds are used to support broadband innovation and competition, not to line the coffers of Comcast and Verizon.”
Hearings began this week on President Obama’s massive economic stimulus package. That gives us only a few weeks to protect its multibillion dollar investment in a nationwide broadband buildout.
Without a strong public interest voice at the table, lobbyists could steer the money into a corporate welfare boondoggle, gobbling up those billions and squashing the innovation and competition we need to close the digital divide. Unless you and I take immediate action, they’ll succeed.
We need your help to convince Congress to resist the tidal wave of industry lobbying and set strict standards for every taxpayer dollar allocated to broadband — standards that will bring us closer to a national broadband system that is universal, open, affordable, innovative and accountable to public scrutiny.