Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on Wednesday proposed sweeping new federal rules to regulate the Internet like a public utility, a notion endorsed three months ago by President Obama. The plan "assures the rights of Internet users to go where they want, when they want, and the rights of innovators to introduce new products without asking anyone's permission," Wheeler wrote in an essay posted online Wednesday by Wired magazine. An FCC official said the rules would prohibit broadband service providers from blocking access to legal content, slowing delivery speed based on content or source, or favoring some content providers by giving them preferential delivery speeds. "In other words," the official said, "no fast lanes." The rules would apply equally to wired and wireless services, including mobile broadband used by smartphone and tablets. The FCC chairman's approach is an endorsement of what has come to be known as "net neutrality." With two content providers, Neflix and YouTube, accounting for roughly half of all Internet traffic at peak times, some in the industry have advocated charging them or other heavy users for special fast lanes. But advocates of net neutrality have claimed such an approach would make it too hard and expensive for the YouTubes of the future to win over an audience. "Internet companies are pleased to hear that Chairman Wheeler intends to enact strong, enforceable, and legally sustainable net neutrality rules that include bright-line rules," said Michael Beckerman of the Internet Association, representing Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, Amazon and other industry giants. "It will result in a backward-looking regulatory regime, ill-suited for the dynamic Internet." -- Michael Powell But the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said the rules would impose the "heavy burden" of utility regulation on the Internet. "It will result in a backward-looking regulatory regime, ill-suited for the dynamic Internet," said the association's Michael Powell, a former FCC chairman. Wheeler's proposal now goes to the other four FCC commissioners, who are scheduled to vote on it at a public meeting Feb. 26. An FCC official said the plan would not allow the FCC to regulate Internet rates or authorize new local or federal taxes. Comcast, the parent company of NBC Universal, said in November said it supported Obama's call for "a free and open Internet."