Don't let FCC slow innovation of the Internet

By Renee Amoore

Lists of the most important inventions of the past 115 years include the affordable automobile, the electric lightbulb (along with the grid to power it), and the Internet.

While advances in technology have made today's cars far faster, safer, and more fuel-efficient than their distant relatives that first rolled off the assembly line, the basics of most cars are the same: four rubber tires, an internal combustion engine, a steering wheel, a windshield, and so on.

It's been 135 years since Thomas Edison received a patent for a lightbulb, but only recently have they begun to evolve from their incandescent roots into LED bulbs. But the concept remains the same: You screw a lightbulb into a socket (imagine trying to get that through the maze of safety and consumer agencies today!) and, voilà, light.

The Internet, however, has evolved far more quickly. The first Internet message was sent in 1969 from a computer at the University of California, Los Angeles, to a computer at Stanford. Those two computers were the first two - the only two - nodes on the Internet. Today the Internet is a worldwide technological wonder that we nearly take for granted. According to the Internet Society, there are more than three billion - billion - Internet users around the world.

During that time, the Internet has gone from a tool for the government and academic institutions to a toy for hobbyists to (following the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996) a basic system to move information among people, institutions, and businesses.

Since 1996, when the Internet became available for commercial use, the growth, penetration, speed, bandwidth, and services available have all been funded by publicly traded companies. With the Internet's rapid development, there has also been infinite possibility.

When I founded the nonprofit Ramsey Educational Development Institute (REDI) in 1998, we envisioned a way to unite the affordability and accessibility of the Internet to empower individuals. Today, we provide vocational, educational, and life skills to help more than 5,000 people improve themselves and the lives of those around them. REDI is only one small example of the power that can be harnessed when people - not the government - are permitted to let an idea and the Internet come together and grow. There are countless other examples of how the Internet is helping develop ideas, industries, and jobs in our region and around the country.

To show how important the Internet has been to the commonwealth economically, consider that the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis estimated the gross domestic product of Pennsylvania in 1997 - in the infancy of the Internet - at $3.5 billion. It estimated Pennsylvania's GDP in 2013, with the Internet in full flower, at $6.4 billion. That is an increase of nearly 83 percent.

Unfortunately, in February, the Federal Communications Commission, chaired by Thomas Wheeler, took the astonishing step of removing the Internet from the hands of the organizations that have built it into the most important information service in history and declared it a "telecommunications service," meaning it will fall under the same regulatory concept as telephones when the new rules go into effect in June.

With the government's involvement, we risk making the Internet less accessible and more expensive. Do we really want to make people who are already struggling to gain Internet access struggle more?

The future of the Internet should not be in the hands of three unelected commissioners. Nor should the Internet's future be tied up in the inevitable court proceedings that are taking shape as a result of the commission's unilateral action. The change is too massive; the service is too crucial.

Instead, Congress should make it clear that it has the authority to shape the future of the Internet. And currently there are bills - with Democratic and Republican support - working their way through House and Senate committees to do just that.

Rather than allowing perhaps years for the FCC's unilateral decision to work its way through the federal courts, Congress can solve this in a matter of months. If not, it is likely that the investment necessary to maintain the consistent innovation and invention that has created the Internet we know today - and the Internet we can't even imagine tomorrow - will slow to a trickle as investors wait to see how it all comes out.

Congress should act soon. The Internet is too important to its three billion users - including the parents, children, and siblings who rely on it for life-improving training and skills at REDI - to be stuck in the courts.