STATEMENT OF
COMMISSIONER JESSICA ROSENWORCEL
Re: Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet, GN Docket No. 14-28.
Our Internet economy is the envy of the world.  We invented it.  The applications economy began 
here—on our shores.  The broadband below us and the airwaves all around us deliver its collective might 
to our homes and businesses in communities across the country.  What produced this dynamic engine of 
entrepreneurship and experimentation is a foundation of openness.  Sustaining what has made us 
innovative, fierce, and creative should not be a choice—it should be an obligation.
We also have a duty—a duty to protect what has made the Internet the most dynamic platform for 
free speech ever invented.  It is our printing press.  It is our town square.  It is our individual soapbox—
and our shared platform for opportunity.  
That is why open Internet policies matter.  That is why I support network neutrality.  
We cannot have a two-tiered Internet with fast lanes that speed the traffic of the privileged and 
leave the rest of us lagging behind.  We cannot have gatekeepers who tell us what we can and cannot do 
and where we can and cannot go online.  And we do not need blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization 
schemes that undermine the Internet as we know it.  
For these reasons, I support Chairman Wheeler’s efforts and rules today.  They use our existing 
statutory tools, including Title II authority, to put back in place basic open Internet policies that we all 
rely on but last year our courts took away.  The result honors the creative, collaborative, and open Internet 
envisioned by those who were there at the start, including the legendary Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator 
of the World Wide Web—whom we have had the privilege of hearing from today.  
This is a big deal.  What is also a big deal is 4 million voices.  Four million Americans wrote this 
agency to make known their ideas, thoughts, and deeply-held opinions about Internet openness.  They lit 
up our phone lines, clogged our e-mail in-boxes, and jammed our online comment system.  That might be 
messy, but whatever our disagreements on network neutrality are, I hope we can agree that’s democracy 
in action and something we can all support.