To the Editor:

In response to “Opinion: Dumping net neutrality is opposite authoritarianism, Morristown resident says” which appeared on North Country Now:

The logic for that statement fails nearly every test of authenticity I can think of. Without "Net Neutrality" many of the large number of ISPs in this area might be banned from offering you their services. ISPs that could offer you those services, of which there would be a lot fewer, will be allowed to charge you inflated and unreasonable rates for their services. Users of ROKU where many various offers of movies and shows are made, could be forbidden by the ISP (bandwidth), amid climbing prices for them, and several websites might not even be able to carry, say, Netflix, because of the demands (bandwidth) of its viewers. The few carriers of Roku services could be allowed by some certain ISPs, all at inflated prices.

With Net Neutrality, these things cannot and do not happen to us. If there are too many viewers who watch, say Netflix, for a company to serve, they instead simply add more servers until they can keep the signals fast for their customers. Without Net Neutrality, this might not be so, depending on who you have your accounts with.

Free market and demand would remain the controlling factor with Net Neutrality in place. e.g. FIOS exists about 600-feet down the road from us; to get it here we'd have to pay for the infrastructure to get the wires to our house, which is in the order of around $1,000 plus the higher cost of FIOS services. We simply stayed with ADSL and it's plenty fast to keep up with Roku and surfing, mailing, etc., use of the 'net. So, even if it were available, I wouldn't be able to afford FIOS.

I protest the entire article and I do not think it is in the best interests to ruin Net Neutrality.

Tom Rivet

Heuvelton