[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 59 (Wednesday, April 5, 2017)]
[House]
[Page H2702]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          MORE COMPETITION NEEDED IN BROADBAND COMMUNICATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Khanna) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KHANNA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my deep concern with 
the recent FCC decision that strips Charter Communications of the 
requirement to provide broadband in a competitive manner.
  When Charter merged with Time Warner, there was a regulatory review, 
and the requirement was that Charter would actually provide broadband 
in areas that would improve competition. Just yesterday, the Chairman 
revoked that regulatory decision and said that Charter doesn't have to 
provide broadband in an area where some other competitor is providing 
broadband.
  Now, why does this matter? Americans already pay three to four times 
more for access to the internet than our European counterparts, and 
that is absurd. We invented the internet. We built the technology that 
fuels the internet. We should have the cheapest prices.
  So why don't we have cheaper prices? It is because four or five 
monopolies basically provide the internet service for everyone. You 
have Verizon, AT&T, Comcast.
  What is the solution? We need more competition.
  But what is this FCC Chairman doing? He is having policies that are 
going to lead to less competition, basically carving up the map of this 
country and saying: You can only provide service here. Don't compete 
with anyone else.
  Let's just carve up the map so every ISP provides service in a 
particular area and you don't have competition. And who suffers? The 
consumers.
  And, by the way, it is not just the consumers in my district in 
Silicon Valley. It is consumers in rural America who are paying the 
highest prices for internet service.
  Mr. Speaker, we need an FCC that is going to promote competition, 
that is going to go after monopolies, that is going to put American 
citizens ahead of corporate profits. If anything, we need a country 
that is going to have universal broadband, universal internet access.
  Just like we talk about having a universal right to health care, just 
like we talk about a universal right to college, we can't live in a 
society where everyone can't have access to the internet. The jobs of 
the future are going to require it, and it ought to be a bipartisan 
issue to have universal access to the internet at the cheapest prices, 
cheaper than any other country, not five or six times more expensive 
than other countries, given that all of the technology was developed 
here in the United States.
  And one final point. Noah Smith and Heather Boushey and others have 
talked about what really will create the jobs of the future, and they 
have written about having universities and colleges spread out across 
this country. Abraham Lincoln did it with the land grants in the 1860s.
  We need college towns across America, and if we did that, if we 
expanded our universities, if we expanded research, if we expanded 
broadband in a competitive place, we could create the jobs of the 
future all across this great country.

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