Democratic leader of US House of Representatives issues letter in support of net neutrality

Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Leader of the US House of Representatives has expressed her support for net neutrality, in a letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Ajit Pai. In her letter, Pelosi notes that ‘consumers should be able to use the internet on the device they want, using the apps and services they want without their internet provider standing in the way’. She states her support for current net neutrality rules, ‘because they are in place to protect consumers’, as well as her opposition to FCC’s ‘efforts to eliminate them’. Pelosi also argues in favour of maintaining the classification of broadband as a utility, and says that the ‘legal framework for net neutrality promoted a “virtuous circle” – where broadband providers continued to invest in order to deliver faster speeds to customers, and innovators on the edge continued to come up with apps and services that encouraged people buy those faster connections’.