FCC's Wheeler Defends Net Neutrality

Tom Wheeler

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler Tuesday defended the FCC's new rules for Internet service providers, saying they are "about as far from the old-style monopoly regulation as you can getm" according to arstechnica.com.

While cable companies and telecommunications providers have threatened lawsuits, claiming the "utility" rules will hurt consumers and impede investment, Wheeler talked about how lenient the regulations are in a public Q&A session at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Led by Wheeler, the FCC last week reclassified fixed and mobile broadband providers in the US as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, allowing the commission to enforce network neutrality rules and other standards.

This is the same statute that applies to the old telephone monopolies, but not all of the same rules will apply.

"Those who were opposed to the Open Internet rules always liked to say, 'this is terrible, depression-era monopoly regulation,' but the fact of the matter is we took the Title II concept and we modernized it," Wheeler said. "We built our model for net neutrality on the regulatory model that has been wildly successful in the United States for mobile."

Wheeler said the new system includes "only four" hard and fast rules: bans on Internet service providers blocking traffic, throttling traffic, and prioritizing traffic in exchange for payment, and a requirement to be transparent about network practices.

Any other actions by Internet providers will be judged on a case-by-case basis to determine whether it is "just and reasonable," he said.

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