In her letter last week about Federal Communications Commission (FCC) involvement in maintaining and promoting an open Internet, Diane Hawkins voices fears of government intrusion in her life. She attempts to politicize it, but I believe Ms. Hawkins isn’t well-informed.

The FCC hasn’t decided recently to “dabble in operations of the Internet.” As its name implies, the FCC’s charter requires it be involved in issues of communications, which the Internet has evolved to become a big part of in today’s society.

While the phrase “net neutrality” may be new to some people, the concept has touched consumers’ lives since the days of the Ma

F P 5 — Bell (AT&T) telephone monopoly. When AT&T was broken up in the 1980s, it was because consumers were being unfairly taken advantage of.

Again in 1996, legislation was passed to ensure that new competitive phone companies were on equal footing with the regional Bell companies (i.e. the “pieces” of the AT&T monopoly). Such U.S. government/ FCC consumer advocacy played a big part in promoting competition, which resulted in low-cost long-distance service and the Internet in our homes.

We’ve now reached a point where a few large Internet service providers (ISPs) wish to repeat the monopolistic practices of Ma Bell, this time by manipulating our Internet experience. A technology called “deep packet inspection” provides the tool for companies like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, etc. to view details of Internet communications and then decide how quickly to deliver the content or even whether to deliver it at all.

A good analogy is to consider the U.S. Postal Service deciding to open our mail and make delivery decisions based on what it finds inside. Our ISPs are employing this policy today! The FCC’s net neutrality stance aims to eliminate this practice.

So, in reality the FCC is looking out for the best interests of consumers.

Failure to act will result in a degraded Internet experience because content will become subject to the whims—and profits— of the ISPs.

We’ll be saying goodbye to free enterprise, and the open Internet we’ve grown to love will become a footnote in history. Kevin Redner Newbury Park