Dear Chairman Wheeler,
Consider this. What would happen if you told the ISPs that they cannot have a two tiered Internet?
Comcast will not go away. Trust me they'll make plenty of money, if my ever rising cable bill is any indication. The other ISPs will not say, oh well then, we're closing up shop -too bad, no more internet for you. The Internet will go on - with or without the current ISPs- simply moving all speech, all business, all religion, all social justice, all books, all news, all video -all everything for everybody- just as it does now: free flowing, without regard to who sent or receives it, without censorship and with opportunity for anyone and everyone.
This is really not that hard: in my country, the citizens are empowered to run the show. If we want to say ISPs can't take over the Internet then we can say that and that's just tough beans for Comcast. And remember, you are working for us, not them.
But if you do go ahead with this historically monumental bad idea, then at least protect the citizens by 1) forbidding lawsuits against any governmental body or citizen co-op, from the feds on down, that want to build citizen owned Internet services, and 2) requiring every ISP to pass citizen owned internet data at the fastest speed possible on their systems.
I won't speculate as to your motives for not putting forth real and strong protection for Net Neutrality, nor will I question the President's motives for giving tacit support for killing Net Neutrality by his stunning silence and lack of leadership, but if you do cave to industry pressure and take the Internet away from citizens, then the activism will begin for Congress to override that poor choice with new law.
Ask yourself this: are the ISPs really that much more important than citizens? Must the big guys always win? This is not an issue of trade or of technology: the Internet is fundamentally an historic evolution in human communication that has proven it's immense potential in both economic and social terms. Your choice is to go down in history as the public servant who set the precedent for free speech for the ages -or as the guy who screwed the pooch for everyone.
Geo. F. Greene, The Pocket Progressive