Technology Investor Is Reported Choice for F.C.C.

WASHINGTON - President Obama is expected on Wednesday to nominate Tom Wheeler, a venture capital investor and active fund-raiser in Mr. Obama’s presidential campaigns, as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, two administration officials said Tuesday.

Mr. Wheeler, who more than a decade ago led two telecommunications industry trade groups, has prompted concern in recent weeks by some consumer advocacy groups who anticipated his nomination and said his background investing in and lobbying for cable and wireless companies troubled them. Many of them felt that the outgoing chairman, Julius Genachowski, refused to stand up to powerful telecommunications companies during his four-year tenure.

But Mr. Wheeler received cautious approval on Tuesday from Public Knowledge, one of Mr. Genachowski’s harshest critics. Officials at Public Knowledge pointed out that when Mr. Wheeler lobbied for the cable companies and the cellphone industry, those industries were either upstarts themselves or far less concentrated than they are today.

A White House official said that Mignon Clyburn, an F.C.C. commissioner since August 2009, will be appointed to serve as acting chairwoman until Mr. Wheeler is confirmed and sworn in. Prior to joining the F.C.C., Ms. Clyburn served for 11 years on the South Carolina Public Service Commission, including two as its chairwoman.

Mr. Wheeler currently is a managing director at Core Capital Partners, a Washington investment firm with $350 million under management. At Core Capital, he has helped to oversee the firm’s investments in an array of start-ups and small to midsize technology companies, including GoMobo, Twisted Pair Solutions and Jacked. He also is a member of the board of EarthLink, an Internet service provider that competes aggressively with Verizon and AT&T.

In columns on his Web site, www.mobilemusings.net, Mr. Wheeler has voiced strong opinions about some of the issues that he will find on his desk at the F.C.C.

He has strongly supported the voluntary incentive auctions that the F.C.C. has been planning. The agency is aiming to reclaim airwaves from television broadcasters and sell them to wireless phone companies for use in mobile broadband services.

In 2011, Mr. Wheeler criticized the broadcast industry for not moving more aggressively to use their airwaves for mobile digital television, or the broadcast of television signals to smartphones. At the same time, he said, broadcasters have been reluctant to let go of the part of the nation’s airwaves, or spectrum, that they do not fully use. The F.C.C., backed by Congress, is preparing to auction off many of those unused airwaves, potentially for billions of dollars.

“I’ve been mystified why broadcasters have declared jihad against the voluntary spectrum auction,” Mr. Wheeler wrote.

“Getting big dollars for an asset for which you paid nothing while still being able to run your traditional business over cable,” he added, “seems a pretty good business proposition - unless you really are serious about providing new and innovative services and need all that spectrum.”

Telecommunications industry watchers who have expressed misgivings about Mr. Wheeler’s work as a lobbyist point out that he oversaw the National Cable Television Association from 1979 to 1984. That could mean that he would look kindly on companies like Comcast, one of the largest cable and broadband service providers.

Free Press, an advocacy group that often opposes telecommunications industry proposals, said the F.C.C. needs as its chairman “someone who will use this powerful position to stand up to industry giants and protect the public interest.” “On paper, Tom Wheeler does not appear to be that person, having headed not one but two major trade associations,” the group said in a statement. “But he now has the opportunity to prove his critics wrong.”

In recent weeks, there has been a fair amount of jostling and lobbying around the chairman’s post. In March, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, a West Virginia Democrat, sent a letter signed by 32 senators to Mr. Obama recommending Jessica Rosenworcel, the other sitting Democrat on the five-member commission and a former aide to Mr. Rockefeller, for the top job.

Three weeks later, a group of Washington technology policy advisers sent a letter to Mr. Obama saying that Mr. Wheeler should be the nominee. “He has consistently fought on the side of increasing competition,” the group wrote.