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AT&T is “very, very” supportive of new online privacy rules to require fellow internet providers and web companies like Google and Facebook to get permission from users before collecting their data.

A top executive for the wireless giant told C-Span in an interview to air Saturday that AT&T is backing a Republican House bill to give broadband subscribers and web users more control over their privacy, Multichannel News reports.

Bob Quinn, AT&T’s senior vice president of external and legislative affairs, reportedly told C-Span the company is “very, very” supportive of Republican Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s BROWSER Act. The bill introduced in May would require ISPs like AT&T and Comcast, as well as edge providers like Google and Facebook, to get express opt-in consent from their users to collect data on their browsing habits, app usage, and other sensitive information used in targeted advertising.

“All of these companies should operate under the same rules,” Quinn told C-Span, especially since the lines are beginning to blur. Amazon is distributing video and Google is offering fiber connectivity, while on the other side, Verizon just bought web giant Yahoo and AT&T is in the middle of acquiring Time Warner.

He added it makes more sense to put them all under the same agency’s jurisdiction rather than divide them between two, and added its helpful for companies to operate under one set of rules. At least 17 states are working to establish their own privacy regimes. Such a “patchwork” of differing rules would be tough for companies to navigate, according to Quinn.

The BROWSER Act came after Blackburn led the charge in the House to repeal Obama-era Federal Communications Commission rules that placed the same requirement over ISPs exclusively, but left edge providers — the dominant players in the online targeted ad market — free of any such restrictions. FCC jurisdiction does not extend to edge providers, which are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission.

Republicans in Congress and those now in charge at the FCC and FTC said it was unfair to subject only one half of the online ecosystem to the rules, and subsequently repealed the FCC rules. Lawmakers on the right were quickly met with a wave of public backlash, and Democrats in favor of the rules vowed to turn the privacy issue into a 2018 election referendum.

In response, Blackburn proposed the BROWSER Act in May, and earlier this week accused Democrats of hypocrisy for declining to support the legislation. Some in the telecom industry speculate Democrat support would cost them Silicon Valley campaign donations that typically favor lawmakers on the left.

Democrats criticized the bill for placing all privacy enforcement in the hands of the FTC, which can’t establish preemptive rules but only enforce violations after they occur (the FCC can and did create such rules). Lawmakers on the left are also wary of a provision that prevents states from passing their own privacy restrictions and doubt Republicans’ sincerity in trying to advance the bill (to their credit, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden has declined to say whether he supports the BROWSER Act).

AT&T’s strong support for the bill makes the optics of opposition tough for edge providers like Google and Facebook, who have already come out against the legislation. Trade groups for those companies warn the bill will increase the amount of generic pop-up ads and erect paywalls for web services that are currently free.

Quinn said AT&T is less concerned about the advertising impact and more so with having equal regulation across the internet ecosystem.

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The top Republican on a House technology committee hit back at Democrats Wednesday for failing to support tough new online privacy rules for internet providers and Silicon Valley, after those same Democrats opposed the repeal of privacy rules that favored companies like Google and Facebook earlier this year.

During a committee meeting Wednesday to discuss broadband expansion across the U.S., Democrats criticized Republicans’ agenda for ignoring more pressing issues, including replacing privacy rules for internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and Verizon. Those rules, drafted by the FCC, would have required ISPs to get permission from subscribers before collecting and monetizing their data. Congressional Republicans voted to repeal them in March with the Congressional Review Act (CRA) before they took effect.

Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who chairs the Communications and Technology Subcommittee, hit back at her colleagues on the left for ignoring a replacement privacy bill she offered up in May. Blackburn’s bill, dubbed the BROWSER Act, would have applied those same rules to edge providers — websites like Google and Facebook, who were left unaffected by the previous rules.

“On the privacy issue, we had a very robust debate around this with the CRA process to set aside those FCC rules that had not yet been implemented and reserve the status quo on that issue,” Blackburn said. “And I will say to my colleagues I would be happy to discuss my BROWSER Act with you on the privacy issue.”

Blackburn said her office has “reached out to all the Democratic offices in the House on this issue,” and that the responses she received were “disappointing.” The Tennessee Republican read from one Democratic response asking the chairwoman to “please remove the 200 other people who have expressed no interest in engaging in this topic.”

“I do hope that my colleagues do want to engage on privacy and that indeed we can move forward on this issue this year,” Blackburn said.

The FCC privacy rules required ISPs to get opt-in consent from subscribers before collecting data on their web browsing and app usage habits. Republicans including Blackburn and FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said those rules unfairly applied to only one half of the online ecosystem, and unfairly benefitted edge providers like Google and Facebook, already the dominant forces in the online targeted ad industry (edge providers fall under Federal Trade Commission jurisdiction and can’t be regulated by the FTC).

When Republicans repealed those rules Democrats accused lawmakers on the right including Blackburn of catering to ISPs like AT&T and Verizon, who are among her top campaign donors. But the bill the congresswoman unveiled shortly after the repeal goes beyond the FCC rules by applying the same opt-in restrictions to ISPs and edge providers, and designates the FTC — the federal regulator with the most privacy experience — as the enforcement agency for both.

Since May, Democrats have quietly doubted Republican intentions to actually advance the bill, but have offered no real criticisms of its language. Even consumer advocacy groups like Public Knowledge, which sits at the top of Washington’s pro-net neutrality lobby, says its “still evaluating this bill.”

So far the legislation has no Democratic sponsors. According to attorney Jonathan Lee, who’s represented large and small telecommunications clients before the FCC, that’s because Silicon Valley — where companies typically back Democrats — oppose the legislation.

“Ironically, to improve consumers’ privacy rights online would be for Democrats to cede the privacy issue for the election,” Lee wrote last week in his blog, which is funded in part by AT&T. “Worse still, it would put Democrats on the wrong side of their core ‘Silicon Valley’ constituency; the tech giants.”

Blackburn isn’t the only influential Republican to pitch balancing privacy enforcement. After the then-Democrat controlled FCC passed the ISP privacy rules late last year, Pai — now chairman of the FCC — pitched the same idea.

“So if the FCC truly believes that these new rules are necessary to protect consumer privacy, then the government now must move forward to ensure uniform regulation of all companies in the internet ecosystem at the new baseline the FCC has set,” Pai said after the vote last year. “That means the ball is now squarely in the FTC’s court. The FTC could return us to a level playing field by changing its sensitivity-based approach to privacy to mirror the FCC’s.”

In an op-ed penned with Pai, acting FTC Chairwoman Maureen Ohlhausen agreed on the need for balance.

“If two online companies have access to the same data about your Internet usage, why should the federal government give one company greater leeway to use it than the other,” they wrote in The Washington Post.

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More opponents are lining up against congressional Republicans’ online privacy bill, including a trade group representing Facebook and Google — whose user data collection would be limited by the legislation — and the ACLU, which says it will limit states’ ability to pass their own restrictions.

NetChoice, a trade group that includes targeted ad giants Google, Facebook, and Yahoo, says a bill proposed by Republican Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn to make web services and internet access providers like Comcast and Verizon get permission from users before collecting their data will end free services online.

“[I]magine a world where the next time you use a search engine, instead of seeing results, you see a requirement to enter a credit card. Or the next time you visit USA Today there is fewer content and even more ads on the screen,” NetChoice senior policy counsel Carl Szabo wrote in a blog post this week.

“In this alternate world,” he continued, “you are bombarded with pop-ups and interstitials, all of which are asking for consent in various ways: blanket consent for use of all ‘sensitive’ information, consent for use of some sensitive information, consent for use of sensitive and non-sensitive information, and so on.”

Szabo warns that will be the fate of the web if Congress advances the BROWSER Act. Under the law, companies on both sides of the online ecosystem would have to obtain opt-in consent from users before collecting and monetizing their sensitive data, a reversal of the current, largely opt-out requirement set down by the Federal Trade Commission. The definition of “sensitive” includes web browsing history, a category previously left unregulated before the FCC passed privacy rules aimed exclusively at internet service providers (ISPs) last year.

According to NetChoice, the bill would erase $340 billion in advertising revenue over the next five years, citing studies that show opt-in regimes are 65 percent less effective. The loss of targeted ads will mean a greater volume of ads, less content, and more paywalls across popular websites, consequences that will hit low-income Americans and small businesses hardest.

The group argues the FTC already enforces privacy standards and that the industry regulates itself. But the FTC rules only require opt-in consent for the most sensitive information, like health and financial data. Meanwhile, efforts by edge providers themselves, like Google Chrome’s “Do Not Track” feature, are largely ignored by other websites. There’s no law requiring they comply with the browser’s request.

Blackburn, who chairs a committee overseeing the FCC, sponsored the House repeal of the agency’s privacy rules. She and other Republicans said the FCC rules “focused on only one part of the internet eco-system and ignored edge provider services that collect as much, if not more data, than ISPs.”

Many of the Republicans who voted for the repeal count ISPs among some of their largest donors, and became the target of a groundswell of constituent criticism. Blackburn’s bill invited another wave of criticism, including from consumer advocate groups who say the legislation is at best a disingenuous attempt at saving political face with little chance of passing, and at worst cover for preventing states from passing their own privacy standards.

“[O]ur skepticism comes from a provision buried at very end of the bill that would explicitly preempt state legislation on these issues – even if a state passes legislation requiring higher privacy standards than Congress,” ACLU legislative counsel Neema Singh Guliani wrote of the bill. “The provision appears to be a naked attempt to undercut state privacy efforts.”

Some 17 states are working on online privacy legislation in the wake of the repeal of the FCC privacy rules. Those efforts would likely prove problematic for internet service and edge providers, who would have to adhere to different privacy standards across multiple states.

States like New Hampshire are considering rules tougher than those passed by the FCC, including barring ISPs from offering discounts to subscribers choosing to waive privacy protections. Other states are considering a ban on collection altogether.

“Rep. Blackburn’s bill would do precisely what industry wants, which is prevent states from taking their own actions to ensure high privacy standards,” the ACLU attorney wrote.

The pro-net neutrality group Public Knowledge has yet to stake out a position on the bill. Other groups that track privacy issues including Fight for the Future, TechFreedom, and the Association of National Advertisers oppose the bill.

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Months after repealing the strongest online privacy protections the federal government has ever enforced and receiving significant public backlash, Republicans in Congress are working to pass their own online privacy bill, and struggling to find support among their base.

In May, Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn introduced the BROWSER Act — legislation that would mandate both internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and edge providers like Google to require users opt-in before collecting and monetizing personal data. Categories of such sensitive information would include a user’s web browsing history, a category previously left unregulated before the FCC passed privacy rules aimed exclusively at ISPs last year.

Blackburn, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, authored the repeal of those rules in the lower chamber. She and other Republicans alleged the FCC rules gave an unfair market advantage to edge providers like Google and Facebook, already the dominant forces in online targeted advertising that ISPs have been trying to get a greater foothold in, since the rules didn’t apply to them.

After voting to repeal the rules, waves of constituent criticism battered Republicans including Blackburn, whose top five donors include AT&T, Verizon, and the biggest cable trade group in Washington.

“The FCC focused on only one part of the internet eco-system and ignored edge provider services that collect as much, if not more data, than ISPs,” she said in May. “The government should not pick winners and losers when it comes to the privacy of Americans. This bill creates a level and fair privacy playing field by bringing all entities that collect and sell the personal data of individuals under the same rules.”

Now groups that backed Republicans on the repeal of the FCC’s rules like the Association of National Advertisers — whose members and partners purchase and sell targeted advertising online and include the likes of AT&T, Verizon, Facebook, Google and others — are turning against lawmakers on the right.

“The Blackburn bill does not improve on the FCC’s fatal mistake in its overly broad classification of ‘sensitive data’ that will undermine the ability for consumers and business to distinguish what is truly significant regarding their privacy interests,” the group says of the bill. “The BROWSER Act also repeats the FCC’s mistake of preferring a vague and confusing opt-in scheme that would bombard consumers with annoying consent notices.”

Groups like ANA prefer the traditional opt-out requirement enforced by the Federal Trade Commission before the FCC passed its rules. The FTC privacy regime also didn’t designate browsing history as a sensitive category of information. The BROWSER Act would change that, and at the same time make the FTC the privacy cop for both ISPs and edge providers again.

Right-leaning tech policy think tank like TechFreedom, which opposed the FCC’s rules, say Blackburn’s bill could result in even more data collection.

“Some companies have an easier time getting the opt-in than others,” TechFreedom President Berin Szoka said. “The more often that sites have to get it, they’re just going to ask for everything else anyway… the ‘kitchen sink’ approach says, ‘well heck, this information didn’t use to be considered sensitive, now it is, so to run my business, I have to ask for an opt-in.’ As long as I have to ask for that, I might as well start collecting other information that I didn’t collect before.”

Such a shift in privacy regulation could impose a cost on web services that are traditionally free, or make the cost of a broadband connection go up, if advertising effectiveness and subsequently revenues go down, he warned.

“Many conservatives really only think of this issue in property rights terms, and if you start from that premise, you’re gonna wind up with something roughly like this,” he continued. “You’re gonna say, ‘well let’s just make sure people opt in and opt out’ … Despite being advocates of property rights in general, the property model just breaks down on the internet. You don’t actually end up empowering users, you end up hurting them. You end up having more information collected, and driving people towards paywalls.”

Privacy advocates supportive of the FCC rules haven’t back the bill either, with groups like Fight for the Future speculating Blackburn only offered it up as a concession to angry voters, and that it has no chance of advancing in the House.

“She’s only introduced this bill — which she probably doesn’t even intend to pass — because her constituents are so angry at her for voting to gut privacy rules,” group co-founder Holmes Wilson told Wired.

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The Republican head of a House committee charged with overseeing internet policy is pitching a bill to make broadband providers and websites obtain user permission before collecting their personal data. The move comes less than two months after Republicans voted to repeal similar internet privacy rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission.

Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn authored the bill that would require both internet service providers (ISPs) like Comcast and edge providers like Google to seek advance permission from users before collecting and monetizing personal data. Such information would include web browsing histories, a category previously left unregulated before the FCC passed privacy rules aimed exclusively at ISPs last year.

Blackburn, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, was one of the Republicans leading the call for the repeal of those rules earlier this year. She and other Republicans alleged they gave an unfair market advantage to edge providers like Google and Facebook, already the dominant forces in online targeted advertising that ISPs have been trying to get a greater foothold in.

After Republicans including Blackburn voted to repeal those rules via the Congressional Review Act, which bars the FCC from passing substantially similar rules in the future, lawmakers on the right were met with a wave of constituent criticism in person via town halls, as well as online. The latter included popular, albeit misguided, crowdfunding campaigns to purchase the browsing histories of representatives themselves.

Blackburn, whose top five donors include AT&T, Verizon, and the biggest cable trade group in Washington, was targeted specifically in campaigns by groups that supported the rules, including New America and constituents like a Tennessee mobile software engineer who raised more than $200,000 to buy her browsing history.

The congresswoman previously described the FCC’s move, which essentially claimed privacy jurisdiction from the Federal Trade Commission, as “troubling.”

“The FTC has been our government’s sole online privacy regulator for over twenty years,” she said after sponsoring the repeal on the House side.” A dual regulatory approach will only serve to create confusion within the internet eco-system and harm consumers.”

Now Blackburn says she wants those privacy rules to apply to both sides of the internet ecosystem.

“What we know is that when people talk about, ‘I don’t like pop ups that I get, and I don’t like this, and I don’t like that,’ that’s activity that comes from the edge providers, not the ISPs,” she said in a recent Axios interview.

In addition to applying the same rules to both sides of the market, Blackburn’s bill would designate the FTC as the agency charged with enforcing the rules.

It’s unclear how much legitimate Republican support there could be for the bill, but it faces an additional legal hiccup resulting from a case the FCC recently lost against AT&T. The ruling essentially bars the FTC from regulating any activity of ISPs, including privacy — an unexpected result of the FCC’s decision to reclassify ISPs as “common carriers,” a public utility designation the FTC is legally barred from regulating.

The FCC took its first step toward reversing that classification Thursday, and a federal court has agreed to rehear the FTC’s privacy case.

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Republicans in both chambers of Congress are moving ahead with a permanent privacy rules repeal for internet providers passed by the Federal Communications Commission.

The House of Representatives introduced late Wednesday its proposal to wipe out the rules with the Congressional Review Act. Representatives’ proposal comes just days after the Senate’s and would prohibit the FCC from enacting similar rules in the future.

Net neutrality opponent and Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn introduced the House proposal as a way to return privacy regulation to the Federal Trade Commission.

“The FCC’s decision last October to unilaterally swipe jurisdiction from the FTC by creating its own privacy rules for ISPs was troubling,” Blackburn said Thursday. “The FTC has been our government’s sole online privacy regulator for over twenty years. A dual regulatory approach will only serve to create confusion within the internet eco-system and harm consumers.”

Passed under the Obama administration’s FCC in October, the rules ban providers like Comcast and Verizon from collecting and monetizing virtually any subscriber information without prior user permission, including browsing history and app usage. The new Republican majority at the agency stayed the rules shortly before they were scheduled to take effect last week as part of their plan to deconstruct broader net neutrality rules passed in 2015.

Blackburn described the move as a bipartisan proposal, but Democrats including Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey disagree. The senator from the Bay State decried the privacy rules repeal as a return to a “Wild West” of data privacy infringement by internet providers.

“The Republican’s assault on the Open Internet Order continues, and the FCC’s broadband privacy rules are their next target,” Markey said Thursday. “Regrettably, Republicans fail to accept what we all know to be true and what the courts have already affirmed: broadband internet is an essential telecommunications service, just like telephone service.”

He added “just as phone companies cannot sell information about Americans’ phone calls, an internet service provider should not be allowed to sell sensitive consumer information without affirmative consent.”

Critics of the rules say they disadvantage the service provider half of the internet ecosystem, while edge providers — including big data giants Facebook and Google — have fewer restrictions on collecting and monetizing user data under FTC rules. Providers themselves warn forcing them to get subscriber consent before collecting data will likely make the cost of service go up.

Proponents of the repeal say the FCC can still regulate privacy via Section 222 of the Communications Act. The provision sets down lighter restrictions on what telephone providers can do with customer proprietary network information.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and acting FTC Chairwoman Maureen Ohlhausen support a return to the FTC regime, but a recent federal court ruling could make that problematic.

The FTC is barred under law from regulating common carriers — a public utility classification used to break up telephone monopolies. The FCC reclassified broadband providers as Title II common carriers in the 2015 Open Internet Order, a legal maneuver to ensure net neutrality rules in the order could withstand a court challenge.

Last August, the FTC lost a legal battle against AT&T over deceptive practices related to the carrier’s unlimited data plans. AT&T argued the FTC couldn’t take action against it because of its common carrier status, and the court agreed. The ruling could make it difficult for the FTC to enforce privacy rules over companies like Google, which providers broadband service via Google Fiber, or Verizon because of its status as a telephone provider.

Both Ohlhausen and Blackburn have acknowledged the issue, but have yet to act on solutions like removing the FTC’s common carrier exemption, which would require legislation from Congress.

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Republicans in Congress asked the new head of the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday to abandon a proposal to make cable providers offer content on apps instead of forcing subscribers to rent set-top boxes.

The proposal is aimed at giving cable and satellite TV subscribers an alternative to paying monthly fees to rent boxes from Comcast, Verizon and others. Those fees cost the average American household $231 annually, according to congressional Democrats. It would also allow third parties like Google to build and sell set-top boxes, on which subscribers could download apps from their TV provider and view content.

Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee have opposed the rules since introduced by former Democratic Chairman Tom Wheeler last year. They asked his newly named successor, Republican Commissioner Ajit Pai, to close the proceeding Wednesday.

“We are writing to ask that you close the docket on the set-top box proceeding,” Chairman Greg Walden wrote to Pai, “and signal clearly to consumers, content producers, consumer electronics manufacturers, and video programming distributors that the commission’s consideration of its set-top box proposal is at an end.”

The letter was signed by Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who chairs the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology that frequently oversees the FCC, and echoes arguments they lobbed at Wheeler on the plan’s potential to harm copyright, advertisers and minority programmers.

“Cable, satellite and over-the-top video services are innovating, bringing their services to apps on new platforms, and responding to consumer demand,” the letter reads. “We should be fostering that kind of consumer-focused innovation, not mandating a one-size-fits-all ‘innovation.'”

The agency scheduled a vote on the plan last year, but Wheeler failed to get the votes necessary for passage from one of his two Democratic colleagues. Former Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel dissented over a proposal to establish a licensing body at the FCC to review contracts between pay-TV providers and the third-party device manufacturers they would have to offer their apps on.

Pai and his Republican colleague Commissioner Michael O’Rielly agreed. Last year Pai said the two-year delay on the plan’s implementation will leave it lagging far behind technology “moving away from set-top boxes” in favor of video streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. A proposal focusing on hardware, he said, could slow the app-based direction of the industry.

“Our goal should not be to unlock the box; it should be to eliminate the box,” Pai said. “If you are a cable customer and you don’t want to have a set-top box, you shouldn’t be required to have one. This goal is technically feasible, and it reflects most consumers’ preferences — including my own.”

Pai said previous FCC regulation in the set-top box market shaped the current system, which costs Americans $20 billion a year in rental fees and $500 million in kilowatt hours in energy consumption, “enough to power all the homes in Washington, D.C. for three months.”

He added multichannel video programming distributors and electronics manufacturers are unlikely to agree on video formats, specifications and standards that would make third-party boxes workable.

“The odds are probably better that Mark Zuckerberg will agree to Kanye West’s request for $1 billion,” Pai joked at the time.

In response to Wednesday’s letter, pro-net neutrality group Public Knowledge asked Pai to support reform.

“Despite the FCC’s recent efforts on this issue, the law has not been enforced and consumers continue to be burdened by a multi-billion dollar set-top box ripoff,” PK Senior Counsel John Bergmayer said. “Chairman Pai should continue the FCC’s work to bring consumers relief in this matter.”

Television provider heavyweights like Comcast and Verizon have begun offering limited content on mobile applications. Last year, DirecTV launched the most competitive offering to date, DirecTV Now, which offers a limited time entry price of $35 monthly for 100 live-streamed channels aimed specifically at cord-cutters.

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A powerful Republican in the Senate’s telecommunications policy committee is the latest lawmaker to signal Congress will take up net neutrality in the wake of a possible Federal Communications Commission repeal, action Republicans hope will bring Democrats to the table.

South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune said he’s “committed to the cause” of net neutrality, and suggested the threat of the newly-Republican controlled FCC repealing the rules may convince Democrats to get on board with a legislative solution.

“Who knows, the reality of a Republican FCC may help inspire some of my Democrat colleagues to embrace the idea that a bipartisan, legislative solution is the best possible outcome,” Thune told the State of the Net conference in Washington Monday.

His speech came the same day Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai announced President Donald Trump named him to succeed Chairman Tom Wheeler, former President Obama’s pick to lead the agency. The Democrat passed the agency’s net neutrality rules along partisan lines in 2015.

Pai and Commissioner Michael O’ Rielly, his Republican colleague, said in December they intend to use their new majority to “revisit” the rules “as soon as possible.” President Trump has reportedly already signed onto a plan to move consumer protection and competition authority from the FCC to the Federal Trade Commission.

Extending its authority to regulate internet providers, privacy, and issues like zero rating are symptoms of the FCC finding “its role in the world gradually diminishing,” according to Thune. The chairman suggested net neutrality could be rolled into legislation to reauthorize the FCC’s overarching mission.

“The last time Congress passed meaningful laws affecting the FCC was in the mid-1990s when the internet was just in its infancy,” he said. “It is clearly time for FCC reform.”

Thune was working on legislation to ban internet providers from web traffic throttling, blocking and paid prioritization — the cornerstones of net neutrality — before the FCC passed its rules in 2015. The FCC’s Open Internet Order went a step further by reclassifying internet providers as common carriers, a public utility designation subjecting them to more stringent FCC oversight.

“Complex and ambiguous regulations that shift with the political winds aren’t in anyone’s best interest,” Thune said. “For people to get the maximum benefit possible from the internet, they need certainty about what the rules are, and most importantly, what the rules will be in the coming years. And the only way to achieve this is for Congress to pass bipartisan legislation.”

Thune touted his committee’s record from the last congressional session, which included passing a reauthorization bill and Thune’s MOBILE NOW Act, neither of which made it into law. The committee finished markup on MOBILE NOW Tuesday, paving the way to pass the bill aimed at freeing up federally-held airwaves for crowded wireless carriers and help them deploy infrastructure for 5G.

Tennessee Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the new chair of the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology that oversees the FCC, agrees. Blackburn said in December Thune’s legislation would be a good place to start.

“A legislative fix is going to give you in the industry the certainty that you need so that you know what the rules of the road are for standards for internet conduct,” she said.

Another alternative would be for the Federal Trade Commission to take over regulating internet providers, as it did before the FCC passed the Open Internet Order. While speaking at the same conference Monday, Republican FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen said the FTC could use its antitrust and consumer protection authority to police net neutrality.

But a recent federal court ruling could block the FTC from overseeing internet providers if the FCC moves too fast to repeal, Ohlhausen warned.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision bars the FTC from taking action against any company acting as a common carrier — the new classification for internet providers under net neutrality, and one the FTC is legally prohibited from regulating.

Should the ruling in favor of AT&T withstand an appeal from the FTC, and with an FCC repeal of net neutrality likely, it will be up to Congress whether to pass new rules of its own or repeal the FTC’s common carrier exemption.

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Republicans are one step closer to repealing net neutrality in the new Congress now that Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn is set to take over a key House telecom subcommittee, where she previously introduced legislation to roll back the rules.

Blackburn was tapped Friday to chair the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. She and other Republicans in the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee spent the last two years grilling Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler over net neutrality rules the agency passed in February 2015.

“We all know that what they’d like to do is regulate the internet so they can tax the internet, so they could then come in and set all the rates,” Blackburn said of the rules in April 2015.

The Tennessee Republican has opposed rules against blocking, throttling and prioritizing internet traffic by internet service providers (ISPs) since the FCC’s first attempt to pass the rules in 2010 under former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. She’s introduced legislation to block agency efforts since the 112th Congress.

Her most recent attempt, the Internet Freedom Act, came a week after FCC Democrats passed the rules by reclassifying ISPs as common carrier public utilities, subjecting them to the same strict regulatory oversight as telephone providers.

The legislation “would block the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules by stating that they shall have no force or effect and prohibits the FCC from reissuing new Net Neutrality rules,” according to a statement from Blackburn’s office.

“There is nothing ‘free and open’ about this heavy-handed approach,” Blackburn said at the time. “Once the federal government establishes a foothold into managing how Internet service providers run their networks they will essentially be deciding which content goes first, second, third, or not at all. My legislation will put the brakes on this FCC overreach and protect our innovators from these job-killing regulations.”

Blackburn was a vocal critic of Wheeler’s agenda during the chairman’s numerous oversight hearing visits to Capitol Hill, where the congresswoman questioned commissioners on a range of issues under FCC jurisdiction including privacy and cable set-top boxes.

The Republican introduced an appropriations amendment last July to block stiff new privacy rules for internet providers the FCC passed last October.

“The fact that we have an agency that is not studying and working on the economic impact and reviewing what this is going to do to the economy is absolutely unbelievable, especially when you look at the fact that the FCC does not have the authority and expertise to move into privacy,” she said at the time.

Blackburn further opposed a measure passed alongside net neutrality to let two municipalities preempt state laws and expand their broadband networks to compete with incumbent providers. The order was later struck down in federal court.

“I found it deeply troubling that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has repeatedly stated that he intends to preempt states’ rights when it comes to the role of state policy over municipal broadband,” she said in 2014 before the order was passed. The congresswoman tried to block the order with another appropriations rider.

Republicans commissioners set to take over the FCC later this month vowed in December to revisit net neutrality “as soon as possible,” but a permanent fix will likely come from Congress, according to a speech Blackburn gave the same month.

“I think you will see us address a net neutrality fix early in the next Congress,” Blackburn told a conservative policy conference in December. “I also believe you are going to see a legislative solution as opposed to a regulatory solution for this issue.”

Blackburn is also a member of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team. Her new subcommittee chairmanship puts her in a prime position to lead broad process reform at the FCC and a rewrite of the Telecommunications Act, last updated in 1996.

Blackburn said a rewrite of the act would better address issues facing the telecommunications industry in the internet age. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman John Thune and former House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton agree. The two introduced a bicameral bill in 2015 to update the act and apply net neutrality rules against content blocking, traffic throttling and paid prioritization, but stepped back from reclassifying ISPs as common carriers.

Blackburn said the bill would be a good place for Congress to start in 2017.

“A legislative fix is going to give you in the industry the certainty that you need so that you know what the rules of the road are for standards for internet conduct,” she said.

Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said he’s “optimistic that the FCC will once again respect the limits that Congress has placed on our authority” while speaking at the same event. Pai is expected to take over as acting FCC chairman until Trump appoints a new agency head.

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