Gizmodo: Big Telecom is spending big money on the Internet Slow Lane

Over 100,000 people have spoken out against the Internet Slow Lane. Now, Big Telecom is running scared, and spending millions to lobby for their Slow Lane plan. Send decision-makers a clear message: https://OpenMedia.org/SlowLane Article by Adam Clark Estes for Gismodo Who's spending the most to win the hearts and minds of Congress in the war on net neutrality? Verizon and AT&T, of course. Followed by—guess who?—Comcast. In other words, the companies that stand to lose money if the internet remains free and open are trying to shut it down.

Over 100,000 people have spoken out against the Internet Slow Lane. Now, Big Telecom is running scared, and spending millions to lobby for their Slow Lane plan. Send decision-makers a clear message: https://OpenMedia.org/SlowLane

Article by Adam Clark Estes for Gismodo

Who's spending the most to win the hearts and minds of Congress in the war on net neutrality? Verizon and AT&T, of course. Followed by—guess who?—Comcast. In other words, the companies that stand to lose money if the internet remains free and open are trying to shut it down.

The Sunlight Foundation recently published a series of graphics showing lobbyist spending from companies that support and oppose net neutrality. From 2003 to 2013, anti-net neutrality groups issued nearly three times as many lobbying reports mentioning net neutrality as those that support it, like AOL, Google, and Microsoft. Verizon and AT&T alone each issued 119 reports, while Google issued less than 25. None of this is surprising, though, because big telecom companies were spending millions on lobbying before companies like Google even employed lobbyists.

It's difficult to boil this all down into a dollar amount, though. While the Sunlight Foundation breaks out these companies' total spending on lobbying to reveal that anti-net neutrality groups out spend pro-net neutrality groups by a five-to-one ratio, that graph fails to recognize that all of these companies hire lobbyists to do more than fight for or against net neutrality. The sharp increase in total spending from anti-net neutrality groups is, nevertheless, undeniable.

- Read more at Gismodo