How does a guy go from being a cable industry lobbyist to proposing two of the most unpopular ideas to hit the business since the retrans fee was invented? However FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler did it, such a transition is not all that common.
"It is unusual for someone from an industry background to be tough on businesses the way he has been," Darrel West, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told Bloomberg, in a rather interesting feature chronicling the Chairman's transformation. "I think he's doing what he thinks is right, as opposed to what people who paid him in the past would have liked."
"The chairman is the rare former lobbyist who is using his industry expertise to aggressively promote the broader public interest," added Michael Calabrese, a director for wireless policy at New America's Open Technology Institute, which says it promotes social justice and access to digital technology. "Neither the cable nor wireless companies can fool him since he knows exactly how they operate."
You can read the full Bloomberg story here.