Honey, I'm trying to watch a show, turn off your phone, and the computer, and the other phone, and everything

If the Republican Party has any moral integrity at all they would not be the Grand Old Party we have come to know and make fun of. Six Republican senators—Steve Daines (Montana), Roger Wicker (Mississippi), Roy Blunt (Missouri), Deb Fischer (Nebraska), Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), and Cory Gardner (Colorado)—wrote a letter of “concern” to the FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler.

Looking at the market for broadband applications, we are aware of few applications that require download speeds of 25 Mbps. Netflix, for example, recommends a download speed of 5 Mbps to receive high-definition streaming video, and Amazon recommends a speed of 3.5 Mbps. In addition, according to the FCC's own data, the majority of Americans who can purchase 25 Mbps service choose not to. More importantly, you have indicated that because fewer providers offer speeds of 25/3 Mbps or greater, more regulation may be appropriate for providers that offer such speeds. (See Prepared Remarks of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler "The Facts and Future of Broadband Competition" 1776 Headquarters, Washington, D.C., September 4, 2014.) By suggesting that offering speeds at or above 25/3 Mbps will subject a provider to additional regulation, we fear that you are putting in place disincentives for providers to offer these higher speeds-a result that no one wants.

Wow.

The “recommendations” Netflix and Amazon make are based solely on one device, using the single app (Netflix or Amazon in this case), with NO OTHER INTERNET ACTIVITY happening at the same time. This suggestion is one of two things: 1) Such a transparent shilling for telecom companies as to be laughable, 2) A level of stupidity and lack of research not seen since Sarah Palin prepped for her interview with Katie Couric.

One of the reasons the FCC made the commitment to forcing monopolies to at least attempt to provide competitive service is because they are monopolies. If you want to see what actual competition does to broadband pricing and service go take a look at places like Chattanooga with the highest and most affordable broadband in the country—not provided by a cable provider. If you can class “broadband” as 5mbs, you can basically call just about everything broadband. The United States by most every metric has the most expensive, and not even the fastest, internet rates in the entire world.

When New America ranked cities by the average speed of broadband plans priced between $35 and $50 a month, the top three cities, Seoul, Hong Kong and Paris, offered speeds 10 times faster than the United States cities. (In some places, like Seoul, the government subsidizes Internet access to keep prices low.) The divide is not just with the fastest plans. At nearly every speed, Internet access costs more in the United States than in Europe, according to the report. American Internet users are also much more likely than those in other countries to pay an additional fee, about $100 a year in many cities, to rent a modem that costs less than $100 in a store.

This is a gross display of big business lackeyism—new word! It’s not surprising, considering that the moment the FCC made most everybody in America happy with their net neutrality ruling, the Republican Party and telecoms began plotting this Revenge of the Sith-type attack on democracy.