FCC Chief Hires a Critic of the Agency

Tom Wheeler was sworn in as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and promptly named to his senior staff Gigi B. Sohn, one of the agency’s most outspoken critics but a supporter of the new leader.

Wheeler, 67, a venture capital investor and former Obama campaign fund-raiser, named Sohn as special counsel for external affairs. Although several public-interest groups warned that Wheeler’s past as a telecommunications industry lobbyist might cause him to favor those companies as FCC chairman, Sohn, as president of Public Knowledge, said at the time of his nomination that she believed he would be independent. Sohn said at the time of Wheeler’s nomination that telecommunications “was a very different industry” when he was a lobbyist. But, she added, “he understands how the regulatory process can be hijacked by incumbents to thwart competition.” Sohn, in her new role, will work with legislators and intergovernmental agencies. Under Sohn, Public Knowledge had been a sharp critic of the previous chairman, Julius Genachowski, particularly over the commission’s failure to reclassify Internet service into a regulatory category that would treat it as a public utility, potentially subject to the same oversight and rate regulation as telephone companies.

Some public interest groups that have been critical of Wheeler expressed optimism about Sohn’s appointment. “We hope her appointment signals a willingness in the Wheeler administration to engage more directly with the public interest community,” said Craig Aaron, the president of Free Press, a nonpartisan advocacy group. “We have high expectations of her and the new chairman.”