This graphic, which has gone viral, was posted from Rep. Ro Khana (D-Fremont). It also became a story in the LA Times on how the Portuguese people now use the internet without net neutrality.
It’s not pretty at all:
Khanna's tweet displayed the mobile internet service offerings from the Portuguese telecommunications company MEO.
After paying a fee for basic service, subscribers can add any of five further options for about $6 per month, allowing an additional 10GB data allotment for the apps within the options:
- a "messaging" tier, which covers such services as instant messaging, Apple FaceTime, and Skype;
- "social," with liberal access to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and so on;
- "video" (youTube, Netflix, etc.);
- "email and cloud" (Gmail, Apple's iCloud);
- or "music" (Spotify, Pandora).
On top of the bill you are paying your telecom for internet service, you will soon be paying for “add-ons” for everything you have been getting for free: from social media, to YouTube, to email. The right-wing argument for killing net neutrality has NEVER been about “innovation” or whatever nonsense justification the telecom companies have been spouting: it’s about stealing more money from us while providing less. In a few years, we will be Portugal. It won’t happen overnight—but I promise you, it will happen.
What our politicians should be doing is fighting to make internet MORE accessible for people. We have passed the point of the internet being a luxury. You must have it: you need it for work, for bills, for services, for just about everything. In Florida, you cannot collect unemployment benefits if you don’t have the internet because they terminated all the phone reps.
This doesn’t just screw over poor people, however. It will cost our nation dearly. In other burgeoning nations, like South Korea, the internet is FOUR TIMES faster and 93% of the population is connected. The reason is due to government policies that rapidly expanded the use of broadband. And they are kicking our a**. Don’t care? You should...
If you travel through Europe and Asia, you’ll notice lightening fast, gleaming bullet trains that can get you anywhere you want to go. Compare that to the US, where we have used the same trains and railroads for 75 years. It’s the direct result of GOP policies that benefit their donor industries, like oil, and kill innovation in an industry that would actually help our economy expand. (The Koch brothers even have an entire foundation set up to attack any modern, high-speed transit.)
The US rail system, my friends, is the GOP model for the internet.
We’ll be stuck with slow, unchanging, expensive internet lanes while the progressive nations that actually invest in—and at the very least, don’t hinder—their digital infrastructure will rapidly expand. Years from now, our internet will move about the same speed as it is now, while elsewhere it will get faster and better. Likely, these nations will become the hubs of new internet innovations and businesses. The US will be left in the dust, but the GOP will be okay with just a few people profiting off the broken system because it’s those few people that fund them.
We have until Dec. 14 to do something. Please do.