"Didn't Wheeler and co. try to overturn net neutrality????"
You clearly do not know what you're talking about. Wheeler and his colleagues passed the strongest net neutrality protections in US history. I'd do a little more research.
You clearly do not know what you're talking about. Wheeler and his colleagues passed the strongest net neutrality protections in US history. I'd do a little more research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Wheeler
Straight from Wikipedia:
"In late April 2014, the contours of a document leaked that indicated that the FCC under Wheeler would consider promulgating rules that would violate net neutrality principles by making it easier for companies to pay ISPs (including cable companies and wireless ISPs) to provide faster "lanes" for delivering their content to Internet users. These plans received substantial backlash from activists, the mainstream press, and some other FCC commissioners. In May 2014, over 100 Internet companies — including Google, Microsoft, eBay, and Facebook — signed a letter to Wheeler voicing their disagreement with his plans, saying they represented a "grave threat to the Internet". As of May 15, 2014, the "Internet fast lane" rules passed with a 3–2 vote. They were then open to public discussion that ended July 2014."
We had a net neutrality law in place before Wheeler joined the FCC. This was the FCC Open Internet Order of 2010 (the 2010 order). The 2010 order was based on regulatory authority that came from Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Verizon sued to have the 2010 order overturned. In 2014, Verizon won, and the 2010 order was dead.
Wheeler then set out to restore as much as possible of the 2010 order. His first approach was to mostly reinstate the 2010 order, but modified by the minimum amount necessary to remove those parts that the courts had found exceeded the FCC's authority under Section 706.
It is quite misleading to say that his proposal would have made paid fast lanes easier, because with the 2010 order struck down creating paid fast lanes was as easy as it could possibly be. The correct statement would be that Wheeler's first proposal did not ban fast lanes (I believe it did add some restrictions on them), because he was operating under the constraint of keeping the regulation within the power of Section 706 as interpreted by the court.
He stated that he was open to considering reclassifying ISPs so that they could be regulated under Title II of the Telecommunications Act instead of under Section 706, if the limitations on regulation under Section 706 proved to be too limiting.
Title II gives much more power, and so would be a much harder sell politically. Title II was called by some "the nuclear option", and using it would guarantee that Congress would try to reverse it, and would also guarantee another long court fight. If adequate regulations could be done staying under Section 706 and avoiding the issues the court had with the 2010 order, they would have a very very good chance of surviving any court challenge.
During the comment period, enough commentator said they wanted to see Title II based regulation because they didn't want to give up the things that had to be given up to make Section 706 acceptable to the court. Wheeler then revised his proposed rules to be based on a subset of Title II, and put in the stronger limits on fast lanes, and brought them up for a vote, where they passed 3-2.