This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
My small business has two homes: Ogden, Utah, and the open internet. In May, federal regulators threatened the latter; they started to change critical rules that promote competition and consumer choice online, sometimes called "net neutrality." I hope you'll join me in opposing this regulatory change and supporting entrepreneurs in Utah.
I've been building Vidpresso in Ogden for the last five years. We offer businesses the tools to create and stream high-quality content to social media services, with integrated graphics, reactions, polls, audience participation all available at your fingertips. We could have moved anywhere when we launched Vidpresso, but we picked Ogden. I love the city vibe, the diversity, the history of the city. And that extends into the tech community, which has grown significantly thanks to Startup Ogden.
Thanks to the internet, it's an incredible time to be a video creator. It used to be the case that only big media companies, with expensive broadcast towers, could reach a broad audience. Now, anyone, anywhere can reach a global audience with relatively simple tools. People have more choices of what to watch than ever and, even better, video can now be a two-way conversation between the audience and creators.
But we shouldn't take the way the internet works for granted. Most internet access is provided by cable companies. They have their own video content, and cable companies have blocked and throttled competing video services like Netflix. In the future, they've said they want to create pay-to-play fast lanes that would favor big media companies over smaller producers.
So far, the Federal Communications Commission has had "net neutrality" rules in place that prevent this sort of behavior. In short, they say that cable companies can't pick winners and losers in the market by blocking, throttling, imposing tolls or otherwise discriminating against online service providers. These rules have allowed startups like mine to flourish, because we can focus on building a great product, rather than begging permission from big cable companies all over the country.
Unfortunately, the new chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, recently begun to undo these rules. The existing rules work well, and courts have said the current legal framework is the only way to effectively ban blocking, throttling and paid fast lanes. Yet the chairman's proposal would undermine this legal framework and give a green light to new types of discrimination.
If we just want more media startups to call big cable companies their home, then this might be OK. But if we want more startups to call Utah home, then we need to stop the FCC's plan.
I encourage everyone who believes in startups, entrepreneurs and building a better Utah economy to contact the FCC, their congressmen and senators to let them know that the existing strong net neutrality rules should stay.
Randall Bennett is co-founder of Vidpresso, a software company that helps people create high-quality broadcasts and live streams through interactive graphics.