The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is drafting new regulations to restrict telecommunications, cable and wireless companies from interfering with the flow of information and internet applications on their network.

Julius Genachowski, the FCC chairman on Monday in an address at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, pitched his views on the new set of rules defining the network neutrality, saying that wireless carriers shouldn''t be allowed to block select Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

Genachowski said that wireless carriers should be subject to the same "open Internet" rules that the agency has begun to apply to home broadband providers and advocated the extension of the current FCC rules that applies to wired Internet traffic to wireless.

The proposal echoes Barack Obama’s speech made during the presidential campaign to support Internet neutrality, the equal treatment of Internet traffic.

However, these guidelines have been met with heavy criticisms from applications developers like Google and public interest groups for not going far enough to clarify what is defined as discriminatory behavior.

While Comcast is battling in federal court an FCC ruling that it violated the guidelines by blocking a video application last year. AT&T and Verizon have called more regulation as unnecessary. At the same time, they have agreed to not voice against an additional guideline that focuses on discriminatory behavior.

Whilst explaining the need for an adoption of such a principle, Genachowski stated, “The internet was conceived as a tool whose user manual would be free and available to all. But new network management practices and technologies challenge this original understanding. Today, broadband providers have the technical ability to change how the Internet works for millions of users —with profound consequences for those users and content, application, and service providers around the world.”