Rep Blackburn Slams FCC Over Set-Tops, Preemption

Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) says that she does not take issue with the fact that the Federal Communications Commission has chosen to tackle some tough issues--those include privacy, and broadband regulation, and set-tops--but that it has "embraced controversial solutions" seemingly at every turn, including potentially allowing theft by third-party navigation device and radical federal overreach via municipal broadband state law preemption. Rep Blackburn raised those issues at an FCC oversight hearing March 22, then drilled down on them in a keynote speech at a Free State Foundation policy conference the next day.

Rep Blackburn is no fan of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposed new framework for regulating broadband customer privacy, authority the FCC gave itself when it reclassified ISPs as Title II telecom services, a move Blackburn also did not like. Rep Blackburn is also no fan of the FCC's preemption of Tennessee state laws limiting municipal broadband buildouts. She says the logic behind the FCC's preemption is "fundamentally flawed." "Private companies can’t be expected to compete with taxpayer backed entities," she says. Cable operators who have pushed back on those municipal buildouts agree, arguing that they can be a way to cross-subsidize overbuilds, sometimes with taxpayers left holding the bag for efforts that don't pan out.