Eagle Communications President and CEO Gary Shorman issued the following statement regarding President Barack Obama’s recent announcement calling on the FCC to move away from the longstanding, bipartisan policy of lightly regulating the Internet to a policy that applies highly regulatory Title II regulations to the Internet.

“President Obama’s call for the FCC to impose burdensome and complex Title II regulations on Internet service providers, including small, innovative companies like Eagle Communications, will hamper our ongoing efforts to deploy dynamic new broadband services to rural Kansan households and businesses.
We want to use our resources to expand and improve services and increase speeds for our customers. We would rather focus on expanding internet service to our rural customers instead of hiring legal teams to complete the complex and costly filings that Title II would require.

“Eagle is an employee-owned company that has always observed the principles of an open Internet. We will continue doing just that. Our concern now is that this ill-conceived effort to solve a problem that doesn’t exist will ultimately impose new costs on our customers and further delay Eagle’s ability to meet their call for the best that broadband has to offer.”

Eagle Communications Inc. is a Kansas-based Broadband Services and Media Company with over 290 employee-owners. The company operates 28 radio stations in Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri, as well as cable TV systems in 60 Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado communities. The company also offers e-business solutions, web hosting, telephone service, high-speed Internet and wireless Internet in most service areas. For more information, visit http://www.eaglecom.net.