Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler is not convinced that the FCC should treat consumer broadband service as a utility despite President Obama urging him to do so.I guarantee you that Wheeler got a heads up before Obama made the statement.
A report last night in The Washington Post says Wheeler met Monday with Web companies including Google, Yahoo, and Etsy and told them that he wants to find a compromise that addresses the concerns of Internet service providers such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T. Wheeler was formerly a lobbyist for the cable and wireless industries.
“What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business,” Wheeler told attendees of the meeting, according to the Post's sources. “What I’ve got to figure out is how to split the baby.”
Obama argued that reclassifying consumer broadband service as a utility is the best way to implement net neutrality rules that prevent ISPs from blocking or throttling Web services or prioritizing traffic in exchange for payment. Obama noted that the FCC is an independent agency that can vote however it wants, a message Wheeler apparently has taken to heart.
"I am an independent agency," Wheeler said repeatedly during the meeting, according to the Post's sources.
While the Post story said Wheeler is "moving in a different direction" from the president's plan, it did not provide any details as to what that direction is. Before Obama's call for a full reclassification of broadband as a utility, Wheeler was reportedly close to settling on a hybrid approach in which the service ISPs offer to content providers would be treated as a utility while the service ISPs offer to consumers would remain a lightly regulated information service.
"Wheeler worries that the president’s more drastic approach is too simplistic, according to people familiar with his thinking," the Post wrote. "With his long experience in the telecommunications industry, Wheeler is well aware of concerns that ill-considered regulations could stifle innovation and slow the growth of the country’s broadband infrastructure, those people said. And he worries that the White House is being naive about the ripple effects of changing how a major piece of national infrastructure is governed."
In fact it was probably more than just a heads up. I think that Obama knew what Wheeler's response would be before he made his statement.
When I doubted Obama's sincerity, and worried that he would, "find a way to f%$# the ordinary guy and benefit the big corporations again," it appears that I was right.
He gets to pretend to be on our side, while siding with the oligarchs.
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