So i think were going to started. Take your seats. Good folks take their seats if they are to begin. So well get going. I am from the sec office of media relations. Just like you know we would be posting a fact sheet about the proposal and text of the chairwomans remarks and with no further ado let me introduce chairwoman rosenworcel. Thanks, will. Thank you, everyone for being here. You know, it was more than three years ago when the covid virus reached our shores and upended daily life. I dont know if remember those early days but i thought it was bewildering. We were told to stay home, hunker down, and move lifeer online. So i grabbed what i thought wast important at work and moved my office to my dining room table. At home, i kept changing the location of the wifi router, feverishly trying to identify the sweet spot where the signal would reach everyone in my family. We had two parents, two kids, a toocrowded house, and all of us on the internet, all the time. It was a lot. And we were lucky. Because so many others were digitally disconnected. We had people sitting in cars in parking lots to catch a free wireless signal for work and health care appointments. We had kids lingering outside oi fast food restaurants with laptops just to go online for class. We had cities and towns fearful they would never thrive without new efforts to extend broadband to their residents and businesses. As a nation, we responded to this crisis in an extraordinary way. We made a historic commitment to broadband for all. Congress invested tens of billions of dollars into building out our Internet Networks and making access more affordable and equitable, culminating in the investment of 65 billion in the bipartisan infrastructure law. The federal Communications Commission is a part of this big effort to close the digital divide, and that includes her efforts to mapnd where broadbent is and is not all across the country and efforts to assist 21 million households getting online and staying online through the affordable connectivityec program. But the pandemic did Something Else. T it made it Crystal Clear thatad broadband is no longer nicetohave; its needtohave for everyone, everywhere. It is not a luxury. It is a necessity. It is essential infrastructure for modern life. S no one without it has a fair shot at 21st century success. We need broadband to reach 100 of us, and we need it fast, b open, and fair. D yet even as our society has reconfigured itself to do so much online, our institutions havent always kept up. Today, there is no Expert Agency ensuring that the internet is fast, open, and fair. Ex since the birth of the modern internet, the fcc had playedf that role. If you think about it, it makes sense. These are principles that have deep origins in Communications Law and history. After all, back in the era when communications meant telephony, every call went through, and your phone company could not cut off your call or edit the content of your conversation. Now fast forward to the present. Communications means a lot more than just phone calls. It means access to the internett because broadband is the most important infrastructure of our time. But as a result of the previous fccs decision to abdicate authority, the Agency Charged with overseeing communications has limited ability to oversee these indispensable networks and make sure that for every Consumer Internet access is fast, open, and fair. I think thats not right. Because for everyone, everywhere to enjoy the full benefits of the internet age, Internet Access should be more than just accessible and affordable. The internet also needs to be open, and that is what i want to talk about today. The internets open design is revolutionary. It means creating without permission, Building Community beyond geography, organizingom without physical constraints, consuming content you want when and where you want it, and cultivating ideas not just around the corner but around the world. I believe it is essential that we sustain this foundation of openness, and that is why, for as long as i have served on the fcc, i have supported Net Neutrality. At this point, i think it is worth acknowledging that Net Neutrality is one of the most widely discussed telecommunications issues. But the debate around it has routinely yielded more heat than light. So i am going to keep my comments on this topic to the point and focused on the facts. Roll back before the pandemic. Before the smartphone era. Before the Washington Football Team was called the commanders. Lets start in 2005. That was when the fcc adopted its first open internet policy statement built on the policies that had long been in Communications Law and history. The agency made clear that when it came to Net Neutrality, consumers should expect that their broadband providers would not block, throttle, or engage in paid prioritization of lawful internet traffic. In other words, your broadband provider had no business cutting off access to websites, slowingt down internet services, and censoring online speech. Your broadband provider was not allowed to play favorites, like steering you fast to some online sites and services because they got a payout, and consigning you to a bumpy and slow road to reach all others. As a consumer, you could go where you want and do what you want on the internet withoutan your broadband provider gettinge in the way and making choicest for you. After ten years of policymaking and what i think were when i count three rounds of litigation, in 2015 the fcc finally adopted Net Neutrality protections that were upheld by the courts. The fcc had produced open internet policies that passed judicial muster. We had clear rules of the road and those rules were popular. Eighty percent of americans support open internet policies. So this look like was going to be the end of the Net Neutrality saiga. But not so. Because in 2017 the last administration took it up again and did something different. It announced that it would break with over a decade of consistent fcc policy and repeal the fccs open internet rules. The ones that were held up by the court. The public backlash was overwhelming. Maybe you rememberr it. People lit up our phone lines, clogged our email inboxes, and jammed our online Comment System to express their disapproval. Despite overwhelming opposition from the public, the fcc repealed Net Neutrality. In fact, the fccs actions were so extreme that the United States senate voted to restore the agencys open internet protections. I believe this repeal of Net Neutrality put the agency on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the public. It was not good then, but itt makes even less sense now. It determined that this infrastructure, which the pandemic proved so essential for modern life, needs no oversight. I think thats wrong. So today we begin a process to make this right. This afternoon, i am sharing with my colleagues a rulemaking that proposes to restore Net Neutrality. This is a first step. When we vote on this rulemaking, we will invite Public Comment about how restoring Net Neutrality rules can help ensure Internet Access is fast, open,es and fair. We will seek to develop an updated record on the best way to restore a uniform, National Open internet standard. I recognize that were kicking off this rulemaking at that will be the headline today, but while i have yoursh attention there Something Else i want to share to you about this process and this policy today. The repeal of Net Neutrality rules was problematic not only because it wiped away enforceable, brightline rules to prevent blocking, throttlingn and paid prioritization. It was problematic because when the Agency Reversed the decision to oversee broadband Internet Access as a Telecommunications Service under title ii of the Communications Act it had a lot of downstream consequences, and we should talk about them. That last sentence is collocated at a realistic or not from washington, its a little hard to unpacks let me do it for you. Title ii is the part of the law that gives the fcc Clear Authority to serve as a watchdog over the Communications Marketplace and look out for the Public Interest. Title ii took on special importance in the Net Neutrality debate because the courts have ruled that the fcc has Clear Authority to enforce open internet policies if Broadband Internet is classified as a title ii service. Providing a Strong Foundation for Net Neutrality rules is a good reason to support classifying Broadband Internet as a title ii service. But again, there are downstream consequences that flow from the agency retreating from title ii. They need attention. Let me explain. Back to the pandemic. It made clear that broadband is essential infrastructure for modern life. Access to the internet is now access to everything. And common sense tells us the nations leading Communications Watchdog should have the muscle it needs to protect consumers and make sure their Internet Access is fast, open, and fair. Common sense also tells us a thing or two about the state of competition in the broadband marketplace. I am a big believer in the power of competitive markets to drive innovation, investment, and consumer benefits. But i also know the high cost of entry makes competition a challenge in many places. That is why almost half of us lack highspeed service with 100 megabitpersecond download speeds or can only get it from a single provider. In fact, only onefifth of the country has more than two choices at this speed. So if your broadband provider mucks up your traffic, messing around with your ability to go where you want and do what you want online, you cant just pick up and choose another provider. That provider may be the only game in town. You need a referee on the field looking out for the Public Interest, and ensuring your access is fast, open, and fair. On issue after issue, reclassifying broadband as a title ii service would help the fcc serve the Public Interest more efficiently and effectively. Start with Public Safety. In its remand of the fccs decision to roll back Net Neutrality, the court found the agencys disregard of its duty to analyze the impact of the Public Safety renders its decision arbitrary and capricious. I agree. The record before the court demonstrated that when firefighters in santa clara, california were responding to wildfires they discovered that the Wireless Connectivity on one of their command vehicles was being throttled. As a result of title ii repeal, the fcc lacked the authority to intervene. Title ii would also bolster our authority to require internette Service Providers to address internet outages. This really hit home for me when i visited detroit last year. I heard about hope village, a neighborhood of about 6,700 people that suffered through a 45day internet outage during the pandemic and had little recourse. Remember, when the fcc backed away from overseeing broadband, the only mandatory outage reporting system we can have in place is focused on Long Distance voice outages. Let me submit to you in a modern economy, and during the pandemic, collecting only data about when the voice system goes down does not cut it. Look at National Security. The fcc has taken a series of bipartisan actions to reduce our dependence on insecure Telecommunications Equipment and keep potentiallyhostile actors from connecting to our networks. This is good. But it is not enough to keep our adversaries at bay. Today when we strip away authorization to provide service in the United States from stateaffiliated companies who may wish to do us harm, we take away what is known as their section 214 authority. But remember, thanks to the retreat from title ii in the last administration, that authority does not cover broadband. This is a National Security loophole that needs to be addressed. Ds look at cybersecurity. The fcc is actively involved in federal interagency cybersecurity planning, coordination, and response activities. You want the Expert Agency with Network Experience sitting at that table. But without reclassification,n, the fcc has limited authority to incorporate updated cybersecurity standards into our network policies. Ri look at Network Resilience and reliability. We want to make sure our Communications Networks hold up during emergency situations like natural disasters. Title ii could help us to better monitor the degradation of service in times of emergency, with the kind of required outage reporting i mentioned earlier. Look at privacy. The law requires Telecommunications Providers to protect the confidentiality of the proprietary information of their customers. That means that these providers cannot sell your location data, among other sensitive information. These privacy protections currently extend to phone Service Customers but not broadband subscribers, because title ii does not cover the latter. Does that really make sense . T do we want our broadband providers selling off where we go and what we do online . Scraping our service for a payday from new Artificial Intelligence models . Doing any of this without our permission . En look at broadband deployment. As a nation we are committed, postpandemic, to building broadband for all. So keep in mind that when you construct these facilities, utility poles are really important. T. Title ii gives cable and phone companies rights to attach their facilities to utility poles when they deploy service. But when the fcc rolled back its open internet rules, it eliminated the pole attachment rights of broadbandonly providers. If you want build out and competition, this is not good. It needs to be fixed. Look at robotexts. Along with robocalls, they are a big source of consumer complaints to the fcc. One thing we have learned about the bad actors behind this junkk is that they are constantly evolving their techniques to reach us with their scams and fraud. Title ii authority would give us the maximum flexibility to counter this fraud, and evolve our approaches as technology changes. To be clear, the fcc is actively engaged on all of these issues. But at times it can require duct jerryrig the justifications to make sure our actions are ontin. It doesnt always work. And it renders unnecessarily vulnerable some of our most important security objectives. Reclassification of broadband as a title ii service would make fcc work more efficient and effective, and consumers more confident their Internet Access is fast, open, and fair. R. On top of this, restoring our open internet policies will mean that a uniform Legal Framework applies to the whole country. Because if you think that nothing has happened since the fcc retreated from Net Neutrality and are asking yourself what is the big deal, think again. Then look harder. Because when the fcc stepped back from having these policies in place, the court said states could step in. So when washington withdrew, california rode in with its own regime. Other states, too. They put Net Neutrality rules in state law, executive orders, and contracting policies. So in effect, we have open internet policies that providers are abiding by right now, they are just coming from sacramento and places like it. But when you are dealing with the most essential infrastructure in the digital age, we benefit from one National Policy. All of this means we are not choosing between Net Neutrality rules and no rules. What we really are discussing is having one National Standard or a patchwork of state regulations. Having gone through this drill before, i know that a small, but vocal chorus of naysayers is surely already raising their objections. They say title ii is heavyhanded. And if we were seeking comment on applying title ii to broadband in its entirety, they might have a point. But were not doing that. We are approaching it with a light touch. Back in 2015, when the fcc last