The new Congress is reportedly considering repealing the privacy rules that Tom Wheeler’s Federal Communications Commission put in place right before the presidential election. Proponents of the new rules are engaged in a furious public-relations campaign, claiming that consumers’ privacy will be violated left and right if the new rules are repealed. Frightening if true.

When it comes to using your data from Web browsing and app usage, the Federal Trade Commission has been the regulatory cop on the beat. Determined to be relevant in the digital economy, the FCC created its own, radically different set of privacy regulations targeting just Internet service providers. By requiring an ISP’s customers to give permission for their data to be used, the FCC’s new privacy rules subject ISPs to a different and more restrictive set of regulations than their online advertising rivals.

The difference in the rules — “opt-in” rules for ISPs versus “opt-out” rules for edge providers — has significant competitive implications in the online advertising market, which is dominated by Google and Facebook. The reason is that consumers typically elect the default choice out of laziness and respect for the status quo. By making it relatively easier for edge providers to access consumers’ data, the FCC has perversely impaired the ability of ISPs to compete for online advertisers.

Not what you’d expect from an FCC chairman who liked to chant “competition, competition, competition” as his raison d’etre.

Google and its minions are understandably upset Congress might upend this regulatory arbitrage, and they have come out swinging. A Feb. 20 blog post by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in defense of the FCC’s rules begins with a breathtaking subtitle: “Cable and telephone companies are pushing Congress to make it illegal for the federal government to protect online consumer privacy.”

Please. Even if the FCC’s new privacy rules are repealed, there are myriad layers of federal and state protection for consumers. None are mentioned in EFF’s blog.

Where to begin? At the federal level, the FCC has authority under section 222 of the Communications Act to prevent privacy abuses by telephone providers. Section 222 was originally designed to prevent traditional telephone companies from giving their wireless subsidiaries an unfair advantage over unaffiliated wireless companies by sharing customer information with them.

Not content with section 222? Repeal of the FCC’s new privacy rules will not prevent the FCC from establishing a different privacy regime going forward. For example, in the name of regulatory symmetry, the new FCC could replicate the same opt-out standard used by the Federal Trade Commission.

Perhaps anticipating this rejoinder, EFF claims without citation to any case law or precedent that the mechanism being considered by Congress to repeal the FCC’s privacy rules “could possibly bar the FCC from enacting future consumer privacy rules even if they are more industry friendly.” Adding “possibly” after “could” seems redundant, unless there is simply no basis for making such a claim. (I’m anxious to be corrected.)

Moreover, repeal of the FCC’s privacy rules will not prevent Congress from establishing a different privacy regime going forward. To the extent that Congress repeals both the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order and its privacy rules, the FTC would be placed firmly back in control of privacy enforcement for ISPs. Before the FCC’s reclassification of ISPs as common carriers in March 2015 took away the FTC’s authority, the FTC was the primary privacy cop on the beat for ISPs. For example, in 2014, the FTC sanctioned AT&T Mobility for its alleged failure to adequately inform its customers of its data-throttling program.

EFF has argued that a recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision stripped the FTC of its “authority to penalize cable and telephone companies if they deceive their customers, meaning the FCC is the only broadband consumer protection agency.” But Congress could eliminate the FTC’s common-carrier exception, assuming the GOP majority could convince eight Democratic senators to overcome the filibuster rule. This would also return privacy enforcement to the FTC.

Moving beyond federal protections, several states add yet another layer of protection against potential privacy abuses by ISPs. For example, Nevada and Minnesota require ISPs to keep private certain information concerning their customers, unless the customer gives permission to disclose it. And under California law, non-financial businesses, including ISPs, are required to disclose to customers, in writing or by email, the types of personal information sold to a third party for direct marketing purposes.

If and when the FCC’s new privacy rules are overruled, the statute that empowers the agency to police privacy abuses by ISPs will still apply. And nothing prevents the FCC from designing a different (and more symmetric) regulatory standard.

Repeal of the FCC’s new rules will simply restore the regulatory environment that existed for more than 18 months between its reclassification decision and its privacy rules. Given the myriad layers of protections and regulatory options, the notion that repeal would leave the ISPs without any privacy regulator is patently false.

Hal J. Singer is a principal at Economists Incorporated and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, and has served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business.

The Progressive Policy Institute has named its Top 25 investment heroes for 2016 and, as was the case in last year's report, the telecom/cable sector had the lion's share of domestic capital expenditures at $48 billion, with the energy sector next at 33.8 billion.

The Top 25 is calculated according to "estimated domestic investment in their most recent fiscal year" -- 2015 in this case.

The list's telecom/cable sector comprised the same four companies as last year -- AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable. Together, they cut capex by 1.3% in 2015, which PPI ascribes to "increased regulatory uncertainty" combined with normal business decisions, such as Verizon investing less in traditional wireline as it moves more into wireless, for example.

"The fact that the telecom and cable companies manage to stay on the top of the list reflects the rapid pace of innovation in the industry and the desire to meet growing demand for high-speed broadband," PPI said.

ISPs have long argued that the threat -- realized in mid-2015 -- to reclassify broadband as a Title II service would depress investment. PPI is also historically no fan of the FCC's Title II ISP reclassification.

AT&T again topped the list, with $18.7 billion in capital expenditures, though that represented an 11.6% reduction in investment compared with fiscal year 2014.

Verizon followed in second place, with 2015 capex of $16.5 billion. The telco's spending was up 3.4% due to boosts in domestic wireless, which overset declines in spending on traditional wireline.

Comcast weighed in at No. 8 (unchanged from last year) with $8.3 billion in capex, while Time Warner Cable was No. 21 -- down from No. 19 in last year's report -- with capital expenditures of $4.5 billion.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission's decision to reclassify broadband as a Title II telecom service under common-carrier regulations could cost the economy billions in lost investment, plow up potential new services before they have a chance to take root, and deny lower-cost broadband to lower-income Americans — at a time when the agency is ostensibly laser-focused on trying to promote high-speed Internet deployment and adoption.

That’s according to a new policy memo from Progressive Policy Institute senior Fellow Hal Singer.

The FCC's rule barring paid priority could undermine telemedicine and high-definition voice applications, in Singer’s view, the agency's creation of a waiver process notwithstanding. That could mean hundreds of millions of dollars per year in lost economic value, he said.

"The nascent markets for certain real-time applications, including telemedicine, virtual reality, and HD voice, are expected to develop into billion dollar industries in the coming years," he says. "The ban on payments for priority arrangements could undermine certain collaborations among ISPs and websites/application providers (‘content providers’), and thereby thwart a non-trivial portion of these applications."

The FCC in its Title II order did create a waiver process for paid priority, with a standard of demonstrable consumer welfare. But Singer suggested that standard would be a high bar, and pointed again to the public nature of the waiver process as a damper on innovation.

"[T]hat the intimate details of the priority arrangement between an ISP and content provider would be subject to public scrutiny and potentially shared with rivals further undermines any incentives to innovate in the real-time application space," he wrote.

Singer also had big issues with the impact of Title II on subsidized-access business models.

Were the FCC, for instance, to discourage such “content-subsidized” access as zero rating plans or other sponsored data plans, it would discourage potentially lower-price broadband offerings. The FCC in its Title II decision said that such subsidized plans could "hamper innovation and monetize artificial scarcity," Singer points out.

The FCC has said it would take a case-by-case approach to whether various businesses models violate its new general conduct standard for any non-neutral conduct falling outside of its bright-line rules against blocking, throttling or paid prioritization. But that that process includes seeking advisory opinions, according to Singer, potentially sharing prospective business plans with competitors and the public will have the practical effect of discouraging innovative business models.

"The discouragement of sponsored-data plans would prevent certain low-income Americans from connecting to the Internet," he said. That could mean hundreds of million of dollars in lost benefits to poorer Americans.

Singer sees the biggest economic hit coming from the reclassification of ISPs as telecom services under Title II. Broadband providers told the FCC in the run-up to the order that reclassification would hurt network investment, but agency chairman Tom Wheeler disputed that claim.

Singer clearly sided with the investment-chilling camp, arguing that the "regulatory risk" of Title II could translate to a reduction in annual investment of $4 billion to $10 billion.