The federal government’s top communications regulator on Wednesday called for strong new rules to bar Internet and wireless providers from blocking, slowing or discriminating against consumers’ access to particular websites and services, setting up a long-anticipated showdown over how — and how much — government ought to manage Internet access.

Under FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal, AT&T and other Internet providers couldn’t block users from accessing Netflix or slow down YouTube’s Internet streams. Nor could they give preferential treatment to calls made with Skype over those made with Vonage.

Wheeler said the new rules are intended to “preserve the Internet as an open platform for innovation and free expression.”

“The Internet must be fast, fair and open,” Wheeler said in an op-ed for Wired.com. “That is the message I’ve heard from consumers and innovators across this nation.”

The proposal, which Wheeler said he will circulate to his fellow commissioners this week and which would be voted on Feb. 26, represents the latest effort by the FCC to guarantee so-called “net neutrality” after two prior efforts were overturned by a federal appeals court. Unlike those efforts, the FCC has grounded the new rules in its authority under Title II of the Communications Act, which gives it the ability to regulate “common carriers” such as traditional telephone and telegraph providers.

Anticipating a backlash from industry and anti-regulatory Republicans in Congress, Wheeler noted that the Internet came into being in part thanks to previous rules set by the FCC and that the wireless industry has thrived despite having similar rules in place.

Wheeler had telegraphed the new approach to regulating Internet providers earlier this month in an appearance at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. But the move represents a sharp turnabout for both him and the agency. Under the Bush administration in the early 2000s the FCC decided to stop applying common carrier regulations to broadband access. And while the agency had long supported net neutrality rules, it previously resisted basing them on its authority over common carriers.

Consumers, Internet companies and even President Obama had urged the FCC to rethink its approach, and the two other Democrats on the five-member commission are expected to support Wheeler’s move. But Republicans in Congress have been working to head off the FCC with their own net neutrality proposal. Regardless of how that turns out, another court challenge is all but inevitable.

On Wednesday, consumer advocates and Internet companies praised Wheeler for listening to their call to reclassify Internet access as a common carrier service, much like a utility is treated as a common asset, although they hadn’t yet seen the proposal and warned that the rules could change between now and when the agency votes on them in three weeks.

“Title II is exactly the right law for the FCC to be using for net neutrality,” said Matt Wood, a policy director at Free Press, a consumer advocacy group. “Frankly, it’s something we and millions of others been calling for now for more than decade.”

By contrast, broadband companies, anti-regulatory groups and some technology advocates decried the proposal, accusing the FCC of overreaching its authority and warning that the new regulations would discourage investment in broadband.

Wheeler’s move to reclassify broadband “is an unjustified, overblown response to what has in actuality been a by-and-large hypothetical concern” about blocking or throttling access to websites and services, said Doug Brake, a telecommunications policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a public policy think tank.

Like previous net neutrality rules, the new regulations would bar Internet service providers from blocking or slowing down access to sites or services. It would also ban them from creating “fast lanes” for their own sites and services or for partners that paid extra to have their traffic speeded up.

For the first time, though, the new rules would fully apply to both landline Internet providers and wireless carriers. Past net neutrality rules gave more leeway to wireless Internet providers than wired ones. But in an email describing the new rules, the FCC noted that some 55 percent of Internet traffic now travels over the cellular carriers’ networks.

Internet companies were glad to see wireless access included in the new rules. “There is only one Internet, and users expect that they be able to access an uncensored Internet regardless of how they connect,” Michael Beckerman, CEO of the Internet Association, an industry lobbying group that includes companies such as Google, Netflix and eBay, said in a statement.

But the CTIA, the wireless industry trade group, argued that Congress hasn’t given the FCC the authority to regulate wireless broadband access as a common carrier service.

“We are concerned that the FCC’s proposed approach could jeopardize our world leading mobile broadband market and result in significant uncertainty for years to come,” Meredith Attwell Baker, the group’s CEO, said in a statement.

The new rules would also give the FCC the power to oversee interconnection agreements between website operators and Internet providers. As big Web service providers such as Google have started to account for larger and larger portions of total Internet traffic, Internet providers have forced those companies to pay for upgrading their connections to the Internet companies’ networks.

The deals came under scrutiny — and were brought into the net neutrality deliberations — after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings complained last year that Internet providers including Comcast were intentionally throttling customers’ access to its videos in an effort to force Netflix to pay to upgrade its connections to their networks. Netflix ended up succumbing to those demands — after which, its customers immediately saw their service improve.

“If such an oversight process had been in place last year, we certainly would’ve used it,” company spokeswoman Anne Marie Squeo said in a statement.

Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-840-4285. Follow him at Twitter.com/troywolv.