Dem Candidate Elizabeth Warren Vows To Restore Net Neutrality

Massachusetts Senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday announced a sweeping $85 billion plan to expand broadband internet access across the United States, especially in poorly served rural areas. As part of that plan, according to a report by The Daily Dot, Warren vowed that if she becomes the 46th President of the United States, she will appoint new commissioners to the Federal Communications Commission who will reinstate the net neutrality rules scrapped by the Republican-controlled FCC last year. After a 3-2 FCC vote in December 2017, the Obama-era net neutrality rules—guaranteeing equal access to the internet for all content providers—went into the trash on June 11, 2018, as AVN.com reported. Since then, several individual states and Democrats in Congress have looked for ways top bring the net neutrality rules back. Warren’s pledge to reinstate net neutrality comes about a week after rival candidate Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator, also pledged to appoint FCC board members who would vote to bring back net neutrality, as TechCrunch reported. While Sanders has also pledged to expand rural broadband, he has not released a specific plan with a dollar figure attached. In Warren’s plan, which she posted online Wednesday,  she promises to set aside $5 billion specifically to bring broadband access to Native American territorial lands.  Tribal lands are the least connected areas in the United States, with only 53 percent of households that own a computer having broadband access, compared to 82 percent nationwide.  In addition to restoring net neutrality rules, Warren also pledged to “require all telecommunications services to contribute fairly into the Universal Service Fund,” to subsidize broadband access for low-income Americans, as well as in schools and libraries. Other Democratic candidates have also rolled out plans to expand broadband access, with the plan proposed by Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar proposing perhaps the most ambitious initiative—a trillion dollar infrastructure plan that would “connect every household in America to the internet by 2022.” Klobuchar's plan, however, was not specific about reinstating net neutrality rules. Photo By Lorie Shaull/Wikimedia Commons