Protect Our Right to Equal Internet Access

High Fidelity strongly supports Net Neutrality.

Until every American can choose among multiple competitive providers of high speed internet access, we must keep in place the regulation which requires providers to give equal access to all internet sites, aka Net Neutrality. The internet is now as basic and important to our citizens as learning to read and write. We wisely decided long ago that education was something to which every American deserved equal access, simply because it helps everyone one of us live in a better country. We all know the same is now true for internet access.

Free markets and capitalism are almost always the best way to do things, because they let competition make better products and services. But if there is only one company selling something everyone needs, like telephone service, electricity, or internet access, free markets don’t work. And that is the problem with high speed internet access in America — if you want fast broadband, about 50% of us have only one provider to choose from.

Some of our most important internet services are both bandwidth-intensive and free — the first to be cut by providers who would be unable to easily monetize them. Consider YouTube, which has come to be a key educational tool for kids and teachers today. And it gets worse: Consider how our ability to decide what’s best for this country will change if the voices on one side of a debate or the other were represented by services with greater access to internet users.

High Fidelity is one of many, many services currently in development that rely on the open, free marketplace of ideas and experiences that the internet can be. Our goal is to build a better way to share experiences using virtual reality. High Fidelity will provide a better way for kids and adults to learn and experience together — for example, by putting on VR headsets and being teleported to a faraway teacher or field trip — but this won’t happen if every teacher who wants to put up a VR server has to negotiate with the carriers for access to her students.

America created the internet, and in so doing we helped bring free access to information to the whole world. Global internet access has probably done more for peace and prosperity than anything else in the past decade. We must continue to lead by giving ourselves the best access to this same tool.

We at High Fidelity support equal internet access as a basic human right, and urge you to do everything you can to defend Net Neutrality.