Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler today defended the FCC's new rules for Internet service providers, saying they are "about as far from the old-style monopoly regulation as you can get."

While cable companies and telecommunications providers have threatened lawsuits, claiming the "utility" rules will hurt consumers and impede investment, Wheeler talked about how lenient the regulations are in a public Q&A session at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Led by Wheeler, the FCC last week reclassified fixed and mobile broadband providers in the US as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act, allowing the commission to enforce network neutrality rules and other standards.

This is the same statute that applies to the old telephone monopolies, but not all of the same rules will apply.

"Those who were opposed to the Open Internet rules always liked to say, 'this is terrible, depression-era monopoly regulation,' but the fact of the matter is we took the Title II concept and we modernized it," Wheeler said. "We built our model for net neutrality on the regulatory model that has been wildly successful in the United States for mobile."

Wheeler said the new system includes "only four" hard and fast rules: bans on Internet service providers blocking traffic, throttling traffic, and prioritizing traffic in exchange for payment, and a requirement to be transparent about network practices.

Any other actions by Internet providers will be judged on a case-by-case basis to determine whether it is "just and reasonable," he said.

"We say specifically we are not going to impose the old-style monopoly regulation," he said, noting that the FCC is not imposing any rate regulation or tariff requirements. Consumers will be able to complain that their bills are too high and seek relief from the FCC, which telecom lobby groups have claimed is tantamount to rate regulation. But Wheeler drew a distinction between settling complaints on a case-by-case basis and telling operators exactly what kinds of terms they can offer to consumers.

"There are no broad stroke regulations saying 'this is how you will do this.' That's old school regulation," he said. "This is not regulating the Internet. Regulating the Internet is rate regulation, which we don't do, tariffing, which we don't do, getting into the details of how you offer your network, what the terms are going to be... We are for an open Internet. That is not regulation of the Internet. That is a very simple statement that says 'no government or private entity will block people's access to use the network as a vehicle for expression and innovation.'" The Internet needs a "referee with a yardstick," he said.

If anyone complains about specific practices such as "sponsored data," in which Web services can pay to be exempted from users' data caps, the FCC will "ask the question 'What's the impact on consumers, what's the impact on edge providers, and is the public interest served?'" Wheeler said.

Wheeler described how the new rules for broadband are similar to ones that have applied to mobile voice for more than two decades.

"In 1993, the wireless industry asked the Congress to regulate them as a common carrier but to forbear from—not to enforce—all of the old monopoly-era regulations. And that is exactly what the rules are today for mobile and it's been wildly successful, $300 billion dollars in investment," he said.

Wheeler was leading the wireless industry's main trade group, the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, when those negotiations occurred.

"There are 48 sections in Title II," Wheeler said. "In the wireless environment, the FCC forbeared from, did not use, 19 of those 48. We're not using 27 of those [for broadband]. We're more deregulatory than the Title II program that was so incredibly successful for wireless. I think this is something to be proud of—we didn't go off half-cocked. We said, 'let's find a model that works,' and we have one in the wireless industry."

Avoiding strict regulation will ensure that network operators "have a revenue stream that is unchanged from the day after the regulation goes into effect," Wheeler said.

US wireless carriers just bid more than $40 billion in an incentive auction despite knowing that they would soon face Title II regulation over mobile broadband. Wheeler pointed to the auction as evidence that carriers will not stop investing in their networks.