Groups Want Trump Administration to Clamp Down on State Broadband Regulations
Major communications industry trade associations complained about state broadband regulations in a joint filing at the DOJ in response to a request for comments by the department’s new Anticompetitive Regulations Task Force. Like the FCC’s “Delete” proceeding, the initiative is part of the Trump administration’s push to cut regulation.
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The DOJ task force seeks to curb “anticompetitive state and federal laws and regulations that undermine free market competition and harm consumers, workers, and businesses,” said a March news release. The effort led to hundreds of responses, many about energy and health care regulation. Comments were due Monday in docket ATR-2025-0001.
The joint filing from CTIA, NCTA and USTelecom says that in 2015 and again last year, the FCC “briefly lost its way, announcing that broadband would be subject to extensive ‘Title II’ federal common-carrier regulation and that the Commission had the power to set prices, dictate terms and conditions, require or prohibit investment or divestment, and more,” The FCC has withdrawn those efforts, but some states are trying to fill any gaps, the groups said.
“Some states have rushed to fill what they see as a void -- rather than an intentional and preemptive decision by Congress to embrace the free market -- and have begun to adopt their own utility-style regulations of broadband,” they said. “This new development threatens to inflict the same harms on competition and consumers that would have come from federal Title II regulation, but compounded by the additional operational burdens, costs, and uncertainty that comes from a patchwork of different requirements across 50 states.” The filing singled out efforts in New York, California and other “blue” states.
USTelecom also filed separate comments that focused on allowing its members to retire legacy systems, consistent with FCC efforts to speed up copper retirements (see 2504030011). Some states “continue to apply laws and rules that are historical holdovers from the Bell monopoly era, when voice communications involved a single provider per jurisdiction, copper wires, and rotary phones,” USTelecom said. Applying these regulations to incumbent providers effectively forces them “to preserve costly, outdated copper network infrastructure and continue offering ‘plain old telephone service’ that fewer and fewer Americans want.” That undermines “providers’ ability to invest in next-generation fiber and wireless networks and the communications services provided over them.”
CTIA took aim at state wireless regulations in its solo filing. “While many states have heeded the clear command of Section 332(c)(3) [of the Communications Act] and appropriately carved wireless services out of regulations that seek to regulate rates or restrict entry by broadband providers, others have not,” the group said: “These states attempt to read the express Section 332 prohibition out of the statute, articulating far-fetched theories under which the provision simply does not mean what it says.” CTIA cited in particular a proposed decision by the California Public Utilities Commission “that would require only nationwide wireless service providers to comply with onerous new customer service and outage repair requirements.”
NAB highlighted the FCC’s national ownership cap and local TV and radio ownership rules. “In a media ecosystem now dominated by streaming services and Big Tech digital platforms, regulations that continue to shackle TV and radio broadcasters serve no purpose other than to weaken media marketplace competition.”
NAB also said antiquated broadcast ownership rules “limit stations’ ability to generate the vital advertising dollars required to cover operational costs” and “prevent stations from growing in scale to better manage costs and increase cash flow.” Radio rules “inhibit stations from providing more differentiated offerings to local radio listening audiences,” the group said: “Correspondingly, these ownership rules, by impeding ad revenue growth and hindering cost management, also limit stations’ ability to invest in more and higher quality news, sports, and other entertainment content, which in turn attracts audiences.”
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation complained about state regulations impeding telehealth. Under current rules, health care providers “are generally prohibited from treating patients across state lines unless they are separately licensed in each state,” it said: “This fragmented, state-by-state licensing system creates artificial barriers that complicate access to care -- particularly for patients in rural and underserved areas -- and imposes unnecessary burdens on health care providers who are otherwise fully qualified to practice.”