Access to the internet is rapidly becoming a more and more integral part of our lives.

Bills are paid online, news is consumed online, TV is streamed, jobs are applied for online and more. In the Vicksburg Warren School District and at St. Aloysius High School, every student is given a computer to use as paper is rapidly left behind and education moves into the digital realm.

Like access to power and clean running water, access to consistent, reliable internet is imperative.

That access may soon take a massive hit. The Federal Communication Commission has announced it plans to get rid of Obama administration rules guaranteeing net neutrality June 11. Net neutrality means that every website is given the same freedom.

Walmart can’t pay to make sure their website loads faster than Target. Internet providers can’t piecemeal your internet and charge you a fee based on what websites you access. It gives companies and users an equal playing field to consume and disseminate content.

If those rules go away, so do those protections. According to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, using numbers from the FCC, 129 million Americans only have access to one internet provider. And large swaths of the country — especially in rural areas like the Mississippi delta — in 2018 users still don’t have access to a single internet provider outside a considerably slower satellite option.

Vicksburg’s state senator Briggs Hopson has pushed an idea to help education in the state by creating a program where students across the state can take classes offered by other school districts if it is unavailable to them. It is a great idea, but hasn’t been able to get off the ground because parts of the state have such little internet access.

If the net neutrality rights go away, it will potentially get worse. In areas with no competition, companies like AT&T and Comcast would be able to set their own rules.

They could slow down news sites that don’t publish ideas they like. They can charge you extra to stream or access websites to shop. They have no competitor so they can impose whatever rules they want.

The senate took a step towards saving net neutrality this week when they forced through a vote to keep the FCC from doing away with net neutrality. Democrats mostly passed it, but a few Republicans crossed the aisle to help it pass. It now goes to the House where it is expected to have zero chance of passing.

According to a poll by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation in December when the FCC first announced plans to do away with net neutrality, 83 percent of Americans are in favor of the rules staying in place. But like with many things in politics money talks and big cable has put a lot of money into seeing net neutrality go away.

Congress and the White House need to step up and put in place permanent net neutrality legislation to protect people because that is their job. To help the people who vote for them, not the companies that line their pockets.

  Brandon O’Connor is a staff writer for The Vicksburg Post. You may reach him at brandon.oconnor@vicksburgpost.com.