Time running out to speak up about Internet 'toll lanes'

Let me offer the following small-business parable:

Lou owns a small business, a pizzeria, in a city with only one highway.

Everyone must use this one highway to get to work, go shopping, see a movie and connect with friends. It's a critical infrastructure for the whole community.

Lou uses the highway for home delivery of his pizzas and to get supplies for his restaurant.

Until now, everyone in the city could use the highway equally. But the on-ramps to the highway are privately owned.

Even though the highway was built with government money, one day the on-ramp owners decided to create a fast lane. Now you have to pay them a lot to get anywhere if you want to get there quickly.

Lou's competitors — huge national pizza chains — can afford to pay this toll. But Lou can't, so he's always stuck in the slow lane, which is more crowded than ever.

When a football fan orders one of Lou's pizzas, it arrives in the fourth quarter instead of at halftime. Lou loses a lot of customers because the highway isn't open to everyone equally.

That is what's about to happen to a different highway all of us have come to depend on: the Internet.

The Federal Communications Commission is about to allow Internet providers to charge tolls for speedy access unless we raise our voices to get the agency to declare the Internet a "common carrier," infrastructure that must be open to all on an equal basis, just as telephones, television and railroads are.

This is a critical issue for small businesses and start-ups. But the deadline for public comments is Tuesday.

If you, like me, want the FCC to require Internet companies to treat small businesses equally, then contact the agency and urge them to classify the Internet as a common carrier.

You can leave your comments on the FCC's website or send them via e-mail.

at www.fcc.gov/comments or send your comments to openinternet@fcc.gov. You also can sign a White House petition asking the president to act on the same issue.

Here's the background:

• The FCC has long had an open Internet rule that barred service providers from discriminating against content providers and other users or blocking any data. In other words, data had to be treated equally whether it came from a big corporation, a small business or a competitor.

• The agency previously has had the ability to determine that the Internet is a common carrier. But to encourage the Internet's growth, the FCC classified Internet service providers like cable and telecommunications companies as communications services.

• In January, a federal appeals court ruled that while FCC has the right to regulate Internet access, as long as Internet providers are considered communications services, the agency cannot insist that Internet providers refrain from discrimination. The court then invited the FCC to classify the Internet as a common carrier so it could insist on net neutrality.

• Instead the FCC, headed by former lobbyist Tom Wheeler, issued a rule that would in essence allow Internet companies to discriminate as long as it is commercially reasonable. Wheeler is an Obama appointee confirmed in November who used to be chief executive of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association and before that president of the National Cable Television Association; he has not removed himself from the decision making but pledged in February to preserve a free and open Internet.

Yet if Internet service providers are allowed to have a fast lane for those who pay a premium and if the fairness of this policy is decided on a case-by-case basis, start-ups and small businesses would have to challenge each discriminatory practice — an unreasonable and expensive burden.

You may not think this has much effect on your small business, but I assure you it does.

If you sell anything on the Web, your site and listings will load more slowly than your conglomerate competitors. If your customers want to find information about your business and your site delays in loading, they will click away.

Many of your business operations likely live in the cloud, i.e. on the Internet — e-mail, payroll, newsletters, document storage, accounting. Those companies will have to pay tolls to keep their services delivered quickly to you.

That means higher prices and fewer choices for entrepreneurs.

For a funny but serious take on this issue, check out the video above from HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

The solution is simple and straightforward: Classify the Internet as a common carrier. That's common sense.

Moreover, the Internet was developed with government money and is the main artery for commerce in our contemporary society. Write the FCC now.

Among Rhonda Abrams' recent books isEntrepreneurship: A Real-World Approach. Register for her free newsletter at PlanningShop.com. Twitter:@RhondaAbrams.