Network neutrality is like free speech – and the Internet needs rules, says FCC’s Wheeler

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler hit back at critics of new network neutrality rules, comparing them to the first amendment and saying neither government nor private companies had the right to restrict the openness of the Internet. “This is no more regulating the internet than the first amendment regulates free speech in our country,” Chairman Wheeler said. “If the Internet is the most powerful and pervasive platform in the history of the planet, can it exist without a referee? There needs to be a referee with a yardstick, and that is the structure we have put in place. A set of rules that say activity should be just and reasonable, and somebody who can raise the flag if they aren’t.”

Speaking at the Mobile World Congress, Chairman Wheeler said, “Those who were opposed to the open Internet rules like to say this is Depression-era monopoly regulation. We built our model for net neutrality on the regulatory model that has been wildly successful in the US for mobile.” "We didn't go off half-cocked, we said, 'let's find a model that works,'" Chairman Wheeler said. He noted that Title II in the original law has 48 sections, of which 19 sections weren't used to regulate the wireless industry in 1993. With net neutrality, the FCC didn't use 27 of the 48 sections to oversee broadband Internet providers -- both wired and wireless. "We are being less regulatory" than with the wireless industry, he said. "Our goal is to specifically not impose restrictions or order on how [the Internet] should work," Chairman Wheeler said. "We want operators to be as innovative as possible and to have a revenue stream that is unchanged. It's with that revenue stream that they will build the networks of the future."