Net Neutrality Rules
But, according to The Wall Street Journal, Larry Summers, who was then Obama’s director of the National Economic Council, blocked this effort, fearful of “overly heavy-handed approaches to net neutrality” that could be detrimental to the economy.
.. That’s when Michael Powell, who was then the F.C.C. chairman — and is now the chief lobbyist for the cable industry — decided he wanted Internet services to be classified as an information service. He essentially commanded the F.C.C. to come up with a rationale for doing so, said Barbara Cherry, a professor at Indiana University, Bloomington, and a former F.C.C. staff member. What Wheeler is doing is not a radical step, she said. “They were classified as telecommunications services because they were telecommunications services.
“Classifying them as information services exclusively,” she added, “was the real radical decision.”