Principles for High Speed Internet Policy

Universal Broadband

Just as government policies helped bring affordable telephone service to everyone, our policies should ensure that every individual, family, business, and community has access to and can use high-speed Internet at a price they can afford – regardless of their income or geographic location.

High Speed

Speed matters on the Internet. U.S policies should promote higher Internet speeds and higher capacity networks. The United States should adopt policies to get us to the National Broadband Plan of 50 megabits per second download and 20 megabits per second upload by 2015. New benchmarks in succeeding years should expand the number of households capable of sending and receiving multiple channel high-definition video and reach the global standard of 100 mbps.

Open Internet

We must protect free speech on the Internet so that people are able to go to the websites they want and download or upload what they want when they want on the Internet. There should be no degradation of service or censoring any lawful content on the Internet. At the same time, reasonable network management is necessary to preserve an effective and open Internet. Most important, building high-capacity networks will ensure that all Americans have fast, open access to all content on the Internet.

Consumer Protections and Good Jobs

Public policies should include consumer and worker protections, should support the growth of good, career jobs, and require the public reporting of deployment, actual speed, price, and service.