LIVE FROM CES 2014: Tom Wheeler, the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, today said the US regulator is taking a “wait and see” approach to AT&T’s Sponsored Data service, but is prepared to act if needs be.

Announced earlier this week, Sponsored Data sees charges for data consumed by specific apps and content charged to sponsoring companies, rather than to the subscriber. But Wheeler said that existing regulation relating to the need for net neutrality means that “if there are untoward things impacting access to the network, innovation, a whole list of things, then the Commission should move.

“My attitude is, let’s take a look at what this is, let’s take a look at how it operates, and be assured that if it interferes with the operation of the internet, that if it develops into an anti-competitive practice, and if it does have some kind of preferential treatment activities in there, then that is cause for us,” he said.

The FCC head also outlined the changing role of the regulators, from the old model where “we pretty much know where things are going” and a “very proscriptive kind of structure” was in place, to the faster pace of today.

“Change is happening so fast, that even the wisest and best intentioned people can’t sit around and be proscriptive,” he said.

“What you can do is say we want to have an environment that encourages innovation, and holds true to a set of values, and maintains authority to deal with the protection of those values. This is not a laissez-faire, back-off kind of thing. But it is how do we allow for the technology to be nimble, the market to be nimble, and that demands us to be nimble as well,” Wheeler continued.

He said that this approach enabled the US to leapfrog other developed markets with the early and broad rollout of LTE networks. “We are the world leader because unlike other governments, our government did not say ‘this is the way things will be done’. And I can tell you, running the CTIA, as I was at the time, there were holy wars going on as to which standard should be used.”

“But it is the fact that the government and the FCC in its wisdom allowed the marketplace to make the decision that created an environment that drove LTE and made us the world leader in deploying LTE. And I think that being the world leader in LTE rebounds to the benefit of our country, rebounds to the benefit of our industry, and rebounds to the benefit of our consumers,” Wheeler observed.