Friday marked the one-year anniversary of the biggest internet freedom victory, ever, when the Federal Communications Commission saved the internet by declaring it should remain free and open, and the internet service providers couldn't become the gatekeepers of the information we all access every day.
That same day, the FCC made sure that the cities of Wilson, North Carolina, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, could move forward with creating municipal broadband, breaking the stranglehold of the cable companies, a handful of which have near-monopoly control in most cities and setting a precedent for municipal broadband efforts around the country.
Since those rulings, the FCC has helped kill the anti-consumer Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger and has slowed down the Charter-Time Warner deal. It's ruled that you can get your cable through a device other than the one that your cable company charges you way too much for every month.
Chairman Wheeler has created a plan to expand rural broadband access and exploring how to expand its "Lifeline" program that provides local phone service to low-income families to include broadband.
For the last year, the FCC has been a real champion of consumers and the public. We asked for this, collectively, in more than four million comments to the FCC on net neutrality. They stepped up, in a very big way and better than we could have imagined during those years we fought so hard for an open internet. For that, we need to thank them, and celebrate a year of victories.