Now With a FCC Majority, Carr Promising 'Very, Very Busy' Coming Weeks
As the FCC commissioners voted up a trio of regulatory items Thursday, Chairman Brendan Carr was predicting "a very, very busy" July and August, with a greater focus on accelerating infrastructure buildouts and freeing up spectrum. Approved at the agency's June meeting were orders streamlining cable TV rate regulation and axing the professional engineer certification requirement for the biannual broadband data collection filings, as well as an NPRM proposing to end the requirement that telecommunications relay services providers support the now-obsolete ASCII transmission format. Thursday's meeting was the first for Republican Commissioner Olivia Trusty, who was sworn in Monday (see 2506230057). With Carr now having a two-person Republican majority, agency watchers anticipate that it will ramp up more substantive work aligned with his agenda (see 2506200052).
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Carr said Thursday that a lot of what the agency does will remain bipartisan. He said he will be in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, next week to announce the launch of a "Build America" infrastructure deployment campaign.
The cable rate deregulation order exempts small cable systems from its rate regulation rules and clarifies that the rules apply to residential subscribers only, not customers like restaurants, motels and stores. Carr said it represents 77 deleted rules -- 27 pages' worth. The commission adopted "reams and reams" of rules in the wake of the 1992 Cable Act, but the changed marketplace makes many of them superfluous, he said. A lot of the rules around cable rates "are a very good place to start" in the FCC's efforts to find "regulatory deadwood" to chop. Commissioner Anna Gomez said that given the changed video marketplace, the order represents reduced burdens on both cable operators and FCC staff. Trusty also approved the order.
NCTA called the rate regulation order "a welcome first step toward modernizing regulations and removing outdated and unnecessary burdens on our industry."
The three commissioners also unanimously approved the professional engineer certification requirement order and ASCII NPRM.
The certified professional engineer requirement had been regularly waived since its adoption in 2022, said Carr. Not long after the standard took effect, "it became clear that finding people with those qualifications was difficult and ... unnecessary."
Thursday’s order instead requires certification by a qualified engineer who's familiar with the network's design and has a minimum number of years of experience, said an FCC release. Broadband Data Task Force officials said Thursday that the final order featured no substantive changes from the draft version, which allowed for certification by a corporate officer with an engineering degree who has direct knowledge of the carrier’s network, an engineer with at least a bachelor’s degree in a relevant discipline and seven years of relevant experience, or an employee with “specialized training” relevant to broadband network engineering and design and at least 10 years of relevant experience.
“Eliminating this burdensome requirement better aligns broadband data collection rules with market realities,” the release said. “The FCC has not taken their foot off the pedal in their efforts to ‘delete, delete, delete’ burdensome regulations so that America’s broadband providers can build, build, build,” said a USTelecom spokesperson via email. “By cutting through this red tape, the Commission has maintained the standards we expect without sacrificing the flexibility we need.”
The ASCII requirement dates from 1991, but ASCII calls now “account for approximately 0.01% of TTY-based communications,” said an FCC release. “Therefore, continuing to apply the ASCII rule causes TTY-based TRS providers to incur unnecessary costs to keep their hardware and software systems compatible,” it said. Trusty said that “although the legacy ASCII format for telecommunications relay services was once widely used when relay services were limited to text to voice or voice to text, TRS has since evolved.”
The FCC’s mission of making TRS available widely and efficiently is “no longer served by requiring that TTY-based TRS be capable of communicating in the ASCII format,” said the draft version of the NPRM. Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau officials said the final NPRM didn’t substantively change from the released draft. “We’re excited to see outdated technology replaced with enhanced capabilities,” said Will Adams, T-Mobile's vice president of policy strategy and federal regulatory affairs.
Meeting Notebook
Too few people in domestic violence situations are aware that it's now relatively easy to separate shared mobile phone lines from their abuser, Gomez said. The commissioners in 2023 approved an order implementing the Safe Connections Act by creating a route for people in domestic violence situations to separate their phone lines from family plans (see 2311150042). While that separation is now far easier, many people don't know it, Gomez said, citing conversations she had with National Domestic Violence Hotline representatives. Pointing to the FCC's open 2024 proceeding about extending the agency's Safe Connections Act work to connected cars (see 2404080072), Gomez said she hoped to see the agency move on that.
Gomez also criticized the July 17 closing of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline's LGBTQ subnetwork (see 2506240051). That subnetwork has provided lifesaving crisis care to 1.3 million LGBTQ youths since it started, she said. Given the particularly high suicide rates of LGBTQ youths, there needs to be specialized support targeting that community, akin to the specialized support given military veterans via the veterans/military 988 subnetwork, she argued. The FCC should push back on and call out the lack of funding to continue the LGBTQ subnetwork, Gomez added.
Carr and Gomez both voiced enthusiasm for Trusty. "I have nothing but respect for her," Gomez said, adding that she hopes to find areas of collaboration between the two.
Asked about the status of the FCC's review of Skydance/Paramount Global, Carr said the agency is still going through a "normal review" that started in January. He pointed to numerous merger and acquisition deals before the agency. "We have been grinding through all of them."
Asked about the FCC’s twin EchoStar probes (see 2505130003), Carr said that situation "needs to change," and the agency has a narrow window of opportunity to act. He didn't elaborate. Gomez said she was concerned about the market harm to licensees. She said the commission needs to maintain itself as an independent, expert-driven regulatory body and not make decisions in a way that reflects the party in power, adding that it’s inappropriate for the FCC to take action that benefits or harms an entity based on whether it’s in or out of favor.
If any FCC approval of the Trump Organization's forthcoming Trump Mobile wireless service and phone (see 250616004) is needed, that agency review "will run the normal process," Carr said.