[Qualman]

Does being a former lobbyist make him inherently evil, though? I'm no fan of lobbying from any aspect, but it's shallow to judge his priorities off of this one piece of his career -- especially with the article highlighting his history in favor of the government regulating telecom.

[mseebach]

As a lobbyist, he headed the National Cable Television Association, and later the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. Why might cable TV operators, cell operators and Internet providers would pay someone good money to lobby for more government regulation? What business purpose could that possibly serve?

[Qualman]

These are irrelevant questions, as the article specifically states that he is in support of regulation:

"...Tom Wheeler, appeared open in 2011 to letting wireless giant AT&T Inc. acquire T-Mobile USA...But he had a price. In exchange for a $39 billion merger, AT&T would have had to agree to a slew of new regulations, according to an idea Mr. Wheeler laid out at the time on his personal blog."

If you dig into said personal blog, you can find the following article [1], where Mr. Wheeler summarizes his reasoning:

"Now we have the perverse situation where a government win means less regulation while a victory for the corporate interest opens the door to more."

It is clear through his explanation that his approval was meant only as leverage for harsher regulations on the duopoly of wireless TelCos. That is a pretty solid indicator of where his allegiance lies. Likewise, if you meander around his blog, you'll see lots of musings in favor of Net Neutrality.

[1]: http://www.mobilemusings.net/2011/09/awaiting-final-aria.htm...

[mseebach]

My point is that "regulation" isn't a monotonous scale from "more/better" to "less/worse". The quote and link does not at all answer my questions; what regulations did he work for as a lobbyist, and why?

Industry incumbents frequently use lobbyists to create regulation to raise the bar to entry in their field, cementing their own position and stifling competition - creating the kinds of complacent mono/doupolies that we know so well from cable companies and ISPs.

[snikolic]

To be fair, those were actually fairly progressive and disruptive industries when was involved in lobbying for them.

[mseebach]

So why did they need lobbying for more regulation? Why did they turn into complacent monopolies?

[rayiner]

Lobbying is just a way of telling the government what regulatory environment you think best suits your industry. At the time he was lobbying, the push was for deregulation, which was the right call.

As for why they have become complacent monopolies: that is the nature of telecom (natural monopolies). There is unlimited economics of scale, so the most efficient state is E.G. For Verizon to keep growing until its the only wireless carrier.