diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 6a86cb78..bd171f7b 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -5,4 +5,7 @@ pytest==2.7.3
 pytest-gitignore==1.3
 pytest-mock==0.9.0
 pytest-pylint==0.4.0
+# moniter version 3 change at https://github.com/kennethreitz/requests/blob/proposed/3.0.0/3.0-HISTORY.rst
+requests>=2.9.1,<3
+requests-file>=1.4
 tox==2.2.1
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 14cdf1aa..e14cafb4 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@
 LONG_DESCRIPTION_MD = __doc__
 LONG_DESCRIPTION = re.sub(r'(?s)\[(.*?)\]\((http.*?)\)', r'\1', LONG_DESCRIPTION_MD)
 
-INSTALL_REQUIRES = ["setuptools", "idna"]
+INSTALL_REQUIRES = ["setuptools", "idna", "requests>=2.9.1,<3", "requests-file>=1.4"]
 if (2, 7) > sys.version_info:
     INSTALL_REQUIRES.append("argparse>=1.2.1")
 
diff --git a/tldextract/tldextract.py b/tldextract/tldextract.py
index 7df45381..8a366f2c 100644
--- a/tldextract/tldextract.py
+++ b/tldextract/tldextract.py
@@ -37,9 +37,10 @@
 import re
 import socket
 import warnings
-import gzip
 
 import idna
+import requests
+from requests_file import FileAdapter
 
 try:
     import pkg_resources
@@ -66,14 +67,10 @@ def resource_stream(cls, _, resource_name):
 # pylint: disable=import-error,invalid-name,no-name-in-module,redefined-builtin
 try:  # pragma: no cover
     # Python 2
-    from urllib2 import urlopen
     from urlparse import scheme_chars
-    from StringIO import StringIO
 except ImportError:  # pragma: no cover
     # Python 3
-    from urllib.request import urlopen
     from urllib.parse import scheme_chars
-    from io import StringIO
     unicode = str
 # pylint: enable=import-error,invalid-name,no-name-in-module,redefined-builtin
 
@@ -369,15 +366,11 @@ def fetch_file(urls):
 
     for url in urls:
         try:
-            response = urlopen(url)
-            if response.info().get('Content-Encoding') == 'gzip':
-                buf = StringIO(response.read())
-                gzip_response = gzip.GzipFile(fileobj=buf)
-                text = gzip_response.read()
-            else:
-                text = response.read()
-        except IOError as ioe:
-            LOG.error('Exception reading Public Suffix List url ' + url + ' - ' + str(ioe) + '.')
+            session = requests.Session()
+            session.mount('file://', FileAdapter())
+            text = session.get(url).text
+        except requests.exceptions.RequestException as ree:
+            LOG.error('Exception reading Public Suffix List url ' + url + ' - ' + str(ree) + '.')
         else:
             return _decode_utf8(text)
 
@@ -393,7 +386,10 @@ def _decode_utf8(text):
 
     The suffix list, wherever its origin, should be UTF-8 encoded.
     """
-    return unicode(text, 'utf-8')
+    if not isinstance(text, unicode):
+        return unicode(text, 'utf-8')
+    else:
+        return text
 
 
 class _PublicSuffixListTLDExtractor(object):