Deregulation Across Communications Sectors the Focus of FCC's Aug. 7 Meeting

An FCC draft NPRM on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) asks about whether the agency should make changes to how it enforces that law and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). A variety of satellite operations would no longer require FCC sign-off beforehand under a satellite and earth station processing draft order. A submarine cable licensing draft order would require that anyone seeking a license, modification or transfer of control will now have to show how approval would serve the public interest. Another draft proposes changes to how the regulator develops Section 706 reports.

CTIA petitioned the FCC seeking changes to NEPA rules, which have proved controversial (see 2505010019). The draft says the FCC would implement changes approved by Congress and pushed by the Trump administration, President Donald Trump’s Council on Environmental Quality and consistent with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado.

“Recent developments from Congress and the Executive Branch have significantly altered NEPA’s framework,” the NEPA draft argues. “These developments, principally intended to bolster U.S. leadership by accelerating the cadence and clip of domestic infrastructure projects, require federal agencies like the Commission to reexamine their NEPA rules and procedures.” The “time is ripe to take a fresh look at the Commission’s environmental review procedures to comport with NEPA, accelerate the federal permitting process, further a national priority of faster and more infrastructure deployment, and ensure that our rules are clear,” the draft asserts.

“We seek comment on whether any legitimate reliance interests might be adversely impacted by a revision to the Commission’s environmental review procedures,” the draft says. It proposes to codify the meaning of major federal action (MFA), “as described in NEPA, and its exceptions, which are currently undefined in the Commission’s rules.” The draft asks whether statutory amendments to NEPA also “warrant changes” to the rules for NHPA reviews. It also asks whether the agency should “retain its current approach of applying a broad categorical exclusion to MFAs, or whether to adjust its categorical exclusion framework to list specific MFAs that would be categorically excluded.”

Satellite Launches

Among actions that would no longer require FCC approval under the satellite and earth station processing draft order, the agency would drop the requirement that equipment being replaced in an earth station without prior authorization has to be “electrically identical” to the existing equipment. That parameter is “overly restrictive,” the draft asserts. The agency would also let geostationary orbit satellites do more than telemetry, tracking and control functions during relocation drifts, as long as those operations beyond TT&C are on an unprotected, noninterference basis.

The draft order would let non-geostationary orbit satellite operators modify, without prior authorization, the antenna, sensor or microelectronics as long as the changes don’t result in increased transmit power or out-of-band emissions, a higher in-orbit collision risk or greater risk of harmful interference to other systems. The draft order would set a 30-day shot clock for earth station renewal applications. And it would let earth station applicants get baseline licenses without specifying a specific satellite point of communication, as well as set up a notification process for earth stations subsequently adding or removing points of communication.

The 197-page subsea cable draft would require applicants for licenses or transfers of control to provide detailed information about the system, including the geographic coordinates of landing stations and of the underwater segments of the system. The submarine cable draft item would presumptively preclude granting a submarine cable application to any applicant trying to land a new submarine cable in a foreign adversary country or seeking to modify, renew, or extend its cable landing license to add a new landing located in a foreign adversary country. It also sets up a process for revoking or terminating a license.

An accompanying submarine cable Further NPRM proposes automatically excluding some applications from review by the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector - i.e. “Team Telecom” -- and requiring submarine line terminal equipment owners and operators to be licensees on a cable landing license. The FNPRM also floats routinely prohibiting the use of equipment or services from entities owned or controlled by or under the jurisdiction of foreign adversaries and requiring licensees to remove from their cable systems all covered equipment and services.

Section 706 Reports

Another draft NPRM proposes changes to how the FCC prepares its Telecom Act Section 706 reports to Congress. “We propose returning the Commission’s analysis to the plain language of section 706, and doing so in a technologically neutral manner,” the Section 706 draft says. “To that end, we propose evaluating strictly what the statute asks of us – availability -- based on what the statute directs us to determine: ‘whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion.’”

The draft asks whether the FCC should again use 100/20 Mbps as the benchmark for defining advanced telecommunications capability for fixed broadband and proposes to abolish the long-term goal of 1,000/500 Mbps, which was established in the 2024 report, to which Carr dissented. “Not only is a long-term goal not mentioned in section 706, but maintaining such a goal risks skewing the market by unnecessarily potentially picking technological winners and losers,” the draft argues.

Commissioners will also vote on an NPRM and an order that examines eliminating “outdated, unnecessary, and burdensome regulations” that apply to legacy circuit-based business data services (BDS) offered by incumbent LECs. “We build on the Commission’s earlier efforts by seeking comment on further deregulating BDS in light of marketplace and technological changes and consistent with recent Executive Orders and other Commission efforts,” the BDS notice says. It refers specifically to Trump’s January Executive Order 14192, on “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation.”

“When the Commission eliminated ex ante pricing regulation for certain BDS provided by price cap carriers in 2017, it recognized that higher bandwidth packet-based services, including Ethernet services, ‘already ma[d]e up a large part of the business data services marketplace’ and circuit-based DS1s and DS3s were becoming obsolete,” the BDS notice says. “We seek updated information and data on the shift from circuit-based to packet-based BDS in the years since 2017. We invite commenters to submit or identify data that would justify further pricing deregulation and detariffing.”

The order would temporarily waive sections of FCC that require the Wireline Bureau to update the competitive market test results for rate-of-return carriers electing incentive regulation and price cap carriers every three years until the commission completes its review of the record developed through the NPRM.

Broadcast Items

The FCC will also vote on a draft item that would repeal 98 broadcast rules and forego notice and comment using the Administrative Procedure Act’s “good cause” exemption. The White House in an executive order earlier this year urged agencies to dispense with notice and comment when rolling back regulations (see 2504100067). The draft item employs a similar process to that outlined in the pending Direct Final Rule draft item released July 6, which is scheduled for a vote at next week's open meeting (see 2507030049). Under that process, interested parties would have 10 days after Federal Register publication to object to the item, and the rules would be automatically repealed if the agency doesn’t receive “significant adverse comments.” The 98 items targeted by the August draft -- detailed in a footnote -- appear to be rules governing analog broadcasting, rules that list citations and cross-references for other FCC rules and federal statutes, and outdated rules that newer regulations have replaced.

The commissioners will also vote on an NPRM and order on reconsideration on the FCC’s disaster information reporting system. The order would grant in part a petition for reconsideration from Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, clarifying when network outage reporting systems reporting requirements are suspended. The NPRM would seek comment on proposals to streamline the DIRS reporting process, including by simplifying DIRS filings, limiting reporting obligations to facilities-based providers, and eliminating a requirement that DIRS participants submit a final report when the system is deactivated. The NPRM “commences a thorough review of DIRS reporting and proposes changes to ensure the system is collecting information useful to disaster response without imposing unreasonable burdens on stakeholders,” said the fact sheet released with the draft item.

Emergency Alert System

The FCC will also vote on a draft NPRM seeking comment on all aspects of the FCC’s emergency alert system and wireless emergency alerts. The NPRM “would re-examine these national alert and warning systems from the ground up and explore whether fundamental changes to these systems could make them more effective, efficient, and better able to serve the public’s needs,” a fact sheet said. The item seeks comment on whether EAS and WEA need to be redesigned to better serve the public, and on the kinds of information that alert messages convey. That includes what entities need to be able to send alerts, what medium is used to send them, what devices receive them, and the nature of alert content, the draft says. “How should alerting systems be designed to ensure that these capabilities are available and maximally effective during national emergencies? For example, would it be most effective for alerting systems to be able to support video messages from the President?” asks the draft item. “We seek estimates of the incremental cost of implementing a universal, ‘video-rich’ alert system for the United States.”

The item also seeks comment on transmitting alerts directly to smart TVs instead of over broadcast airwaves, and on mandatory EAS participation. “If the public’s media habits are changing, what changes can the Commission implement to make sure that EAS and WEA continue to follow the public’s eyes and ears, consistent with the scope of its legal authority?” asks the draft. Though NAB has been pushing the FCC to authorize broadcasters to replace physical EAS equipment in their stations with a software-based system, the item doesn’t appear to take up that proposal.