The U.S. Senate has just a few days left before Senators go home for the entire month of August.  But Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), along with hundreds of phone and cable lobbyists, is working furiously to get them to promise to agree to press for a vote on his telecom bill when they get back in September.

Sen. Stevens' telecom bill fails to protect our access to an open Internet.  The Stevens bill would give phone and cable companies a green light to start charging extra fees to web sites, bloggers, and small businesses to transmit their information over the Internet "pipes."  It would make it much harder for citizens to find the information on the Internet that they now access easily.  It would quash citizen participation as e-activists and as citizen journalists.

The Stevens bill also would mean that residents in low-income neighborhoods could pay more for cable or phone service, while the good deals of packaged services - phone, cable and high-speed Internet - go only to the most wealthy families.  And it would eliminate states' and localities' power to enforce strong consumer protections.

Sen. Stevens is pressing to get commitments from 60 Senators that they will allow this flawed bill to come up for a vote.  A bill that fails to protect our access to an open Internet and that hurts consumers and low-income families deserves to be blocked.

Please call Sen. <insert your sen. here> and Sen. <insert your sen. here too> at < sorry, you'll have to look it up >and ask them to oppose a vote on the Stevens telecom bill.  The Stevens bill needs major reforms that respond to the needs of American families, not just big phone and cable companies, before it is ready for a Senate vote.