Karr also says that Genachowski has been one of Obama's biggest influences in his decision to publicly endorse 'Net neutrality in the past and that Genachowski has held tremendous sway in what he describes as Obama's pro-'Net neutrality tech and media platform.

On the service provider side of the equation, however, there is considerably more caution with regards to 'Net neutrality. Matthew Polka, the president of the independent service provider industry group the American Cable Association, says that while his group shares Obama's vision of maintaining an open Internet, he also says that service providers need to be given some leeway in how they can manage their networks.

"Because our members operate in more rural areas, they have fewer customers per mile and so their cost to deliver broadband to those subscribers is higher," he says. "While customers in small markets and rural areas want the same amount of broadband in rural America as what they have in Times Square, there is cost in building out the infrastructure that our members have to manage and pay for. So if your aim is to get broadband out there, you have to be sensitive to the companies that provide it."

Obama has indeed made giving all American citizens access to broadband Internet a of his economic stimulus package, although Johnson says that the mere concept of universal broadband poses some inherent dilemmas that have to be resolved. In the first place, Johnson notes that unlike electricity- or water-delivery systems, Internet connectivity is a constantly evolving technology that requires carriers to make constant upgrades. The danger in investing large sums of money in Internet services for rural and underserved communities is that by the time the broadband infrastructure is built, it could already be outdated.

Johnson says that if free markets really can't provide rural communities with broadband access, then the government should simply issue a nationwide tax aimed at funding the necessary deployments and upgrades that a universal broadband program will require. Otherwise, she says that the government could spend billions of dollars on a broadband network that will soon be left in the dust by the networks that are constantly being upgraded by private carriers.