HB 1231 Harms Net Neutrality

Shame on Peter Schorsch for running a Florida Chamber of Commerce press release without doing the due diligence of researching it first. Commerce president Mark Wilson is backing HB 1231. Wilson is selling the legislation as a way to create jobs and modernize internet and telecommunications.

The first version of HB 1231 has telecom companies removed from the oversight of the Florida Public Service Commission. The word "monopoly service" would be removed. The legislation is moving back to the days of Ma Bell. Telecom monopolies are against federal laws. That was the whole point of breaking up Bell.

The legislation is anti-transparency and net neutrality. The FPSC or any other state agency would have

364.04, F.S.; providing that the commission has no jurisdiction over the content, form, or format of 32 rate schedules published by a telecommunications company; providing that a telecommunications company may undertake certain activities... and 36 364.08, F.S., relating to price regulation, regulatory methods for small local exchange telecommunications companies, experimental and transitional rates

Are you looking forward to being billed for those "experimental and transitional rates." You wouldn't know since, under the legislation, no state agency would be allowed to ask what those experimental rates are. The state would have a harder time investigating a telecom company of criminal wrongdoing since the FPSC wouldn't be allowed to see documents or obtain a search warrant.

revising provisions relating to access of the commission to certain records of a telecommunications company; repealing ss. 364.185, 364.19, and 364.27, F.S., relating to powers of the commission to investigate and inspect any premises of a telecommunications company, regulation of telecommunication contracts, and powers and duties as to interstate rates, respectively;

I like to hear Mark Wilson explain how keeping the FPSC from investigating telecom companies for price fixing is going to help create jobs.