United Press International, June 1, 2006

AeA, the nation's largest trade association of companies within the hi-tech industry, announced Thursday its support for Net Neutrality.

"AeA supports the entrepreneurial environment that fostered enormous growth of content and services available to consumers," said AeA President and Chief Executive Officer William T. Archey. "The low barriers to entry for such innovators must be preserved in the future for the overall Internet ecosystem to continue to successfully expand. Consumers should be given the final word as to what content and services succeed or fail on the Internet."

According to the AeA, it supports Federal Communications Commission rule-making and enforcement authority to preserve, among other things, consumers' access and choice to legal Internet content, their ability to run applications and services of their choice that cause no harm to the network and their right to competition among network providers.

"Specifically, these principles are meant to help guide legislators and regulators in their efforts to protect consumers, application service providers and online service providers from anticompetitive and unreasonably discriminatory conduct by broadband network providers," Archey added.

The new policy was approved unanimously by the AeA's Executive Committee of the Board of Directors.

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