Policy

Industry groups have submitted deregulatory wishlists for the Federal Communications Commission’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative that aims to eliminate as many regulations as possible.

Broadband providers that want fewer telecom regulations and debt collectors opposed to robocall rules were among those submitting comments to the FCC in response to Chairman Brendan Carr’s request for public input. The Carr-led FCC last month issued a public notice asking for help with “identifying FCC rules for the purpose of alleviating unnecessary regulatory burdens.”

The FCC said it opened the official proceeding—which is titled “Delete, Delete, Delete”—because “President Trump has called on administrative agencies to unleash prosperity through deregulation and ensure that they are efficiently delivering great results for the American people.” Initial comments were due on Friday, and there is an April 28 deadline for reply comments.

The docket has comments submitted by AT&T, Verizon, and the top lobbying groups for the cable, telecom, and mobile broadband industries. Starlink-owner SpaceX and Amazon’s Kuiper submitted wishlists for satellite deregulation. The FCC also received deregulatory requests from prison phone company Securus, TV broadcasters, and multiple groups that want less strict robocall rules.

Carr has long been an advocate for removing broadband and telecom regulations, so rule-cutting requests submitted by Internet providers and their lobby groups probably have a good chance of being implemented. But Carr isn’t against regulations of all types: he has controversially sought to increase enforcement of content policies against news stations accused of bias against conservatives and Trump and has supported many actions against robocallers.

Carr has already started making it easier for telcos to turn off old copper phone and DSL networks, as we reported last month. AT&T and Verizon want additional rule-cutting when it comes to maintaining old networks, and it appears that Delete, Delete, Delete could achieve that and a lot more.

The urgency to delete regulations may have increased since Carr opened the proceeding because Trump last week issued an executive order directing agency heads to quickly identify regulations for removal.

Longshot bid to end news-distortion policy

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) submitted a longshot request for the FCC to eliminate its news-distortion policy. As we explained in a feature article, Carr is invoking this rarely enforced policy to probe broadcast news decisions, such as how CBS edited an interview with Kamala Harris. Carr’s aggressive use of the news-distortion policy has drawn condemnations from both liberal and conservative advocacy groups.

The NAB said that “the news distortion policy does not pass legal and constitutional muster… the policy is not based on any explicit statutory mandate, and therefore it is questionable whether the FCC has authority to enforce it.” The NAB further said the policy “is contrary to the public interest and the First Amendment… impermissibly chills speech and discourages coverage of important public issues, … places the Commission into the intrusive and constitutionally suspect role of scrutinizing program content and the editorial choices of broadcasters.”

Carr’s elimination of the policy would be an abrupt change of course. That doesn’t mean the NAB will get nothing out of Delete, Delete, Delete, as the group also asked for various other changes. For example, the NAB said the FCC should eliminate rules limiting ownership of broadcast television stations and other rules related to broadcast licensing. The conservative broadcast company Sinclair submitted a filing with similar requests to eliminate or relax ownership and licensing rules.

AT&T: Stop punishing us

AT&T’s comments ask the FCC to halt enforcement proceedings that could result in financial penalties, saying that a Supreme Court ruling “calls into serious question the constitutionality” of the FCC’s enforcement regime. AT&T was referring to the Supreme Court’s June 2024 ruling in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, which held that “when the SEC seeks civil penalties against a defendant for securities fraud, the Seventh Amendment entitles the defendant to a jury trial.”

“Under the Court’s clear reasoning in Jarkesy, the Commission’s practice of imposing monetary ‘forfeitures’ without affording targets the right to a jury trial violates the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution. The Commission should eliminate rules that impose such unlawful financial penalties,” AT&T said.

As we reported in November, AT&T and Verizon used this same argument in court to claim that the FCC cannot issue fines against the carriers for selling user location data.

AT&T’s new filing asks the FCC to “close long-pending investigations and other open proceedings that exceed the Commission’s authority.” AT&T also asked the FCC to eliminate several roaming obligations that apply to wireless carriers.

Relaxing robocall consent

ACA International, a trade group for the debt collection industry, asked the FCC to revoke the “revoke all” rule that makes it easier for consumers to opt out of unwanted communications. ACA International said that under the revoke all rule, “a request to revoke consent by whatever channel requires cessation of all contact by any other communication channel that requires prior consent.”

“Per the revoke all rule, callers must stop all future contacts for which consent is required in response to a single revocation request. Thus, if a consumer replies to a text message requesting that the caller stop future texts, the caller must also stop future calls if consent is required,” the group said. Additionally, a “request to stop a telemarketing call stops all informational robocalls or robotexts.”

ACA International claimed the rule harms customers who have overdue payments on several accounts. The “revoke all” rule “puts consumers in jeopardy because they may be deprived of the opportunity to resolve outstanding debts, leaving them exposed to litigation or worsening of the consumer’s credit rating,” the group said.

ACA International also asked the FCC to allow robocalls when there is an “established business relationship” between the customer and business. In 2012, the FCC decided to require telemarketers to obtain prior consent from users even when there is an established business relationship. ACA International complained that its members must follow “a dizzying array of restrictions that require callers to expend enormous resources to ensure compliance” and said the FCC should “eliminate the 2012 rule barring use of the [established business relationship] for calls and texts and restore the exemption.”

Another robocall request came from the National Association of Chain Drug Stores. The group said that under current rules, a consumer opting out from appointment reminders “would also revoke the business’s consent to send marketing messages and other informational messages related to prescriptions or other health alerts, potentially harming consumers, even though the consumer signed up for each program separately.”

“Rather than treating a consumer’s revocation message as a universal opt-out to all types of nonexempt messages, we urge the FCC to adopt a presumption that a revocation message is limited to the specific message program to which the consumer replies,” the group said.

Verizon wants to lock phones for longer

Verizon asked the FCC to eliminate a rule that requires it to unlock mobile phones so that they can be used on other networks. “The rule applies only to a minority of wireless providers (mainly Verizon), creating an unlevel playing field in a critical US industry,” Verizon said.

Verizon was referring to open access requirements in C Block 700 MHz wireless spectrum. Verizon agreed to follow the spectrum-specific rules when it purchased licenses to use the C Block in 2008.

The rule “requires Verizon (and not other major wireless providers) to unlock mobile devices within 60 days,” Verizon said. “This short period contrasts with an industry standard for prepaid service of at least six months and for postpaid service a requirement that the device is first paid in full. This has made Verizon a prime target of international criminal rings who obtain heavily subsidized devices in the US through illicit means and then sell them at a significant profit in other parts of the world.”

The FCC in 2019 granted Verizon a partial waiver allowing the 60-day locking period to fight fraud, but Verizon says the exemption isn’t enough. “For example, even with a 60-day locking period, Verizon estimates that it lost 784,703 devices to fraud in 2023 alone, which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars lost, and this occurs annually,” Verizon said.

Under the Biden administration, the FCC proposed a 60-day unlocking requirement that would apply to all wireless providers. That would help put Verizon on equal regulatory footing with the other major carriers, but the proposal is still pending. AT&T’s comments asked the FCC to close this handset unlocking proceeding without adopting new rules.

Verizon also asked the FCC to ditch some rules related to submitting broadband mapping data. For example, Verizon wants the FCC to end a requirement to create in-vehicle coverage maps. “Requiring both stationary and in-vehicle maps doubles the number of maps wireless providers must create,” Verizon said, arguing that rules of this type “impose costs that far exceed the marginal benefits of the data they provide.”

Many more telecom requests

A filing from cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association discussed last year’s Supreme Court decision that eliminated the Chevron precedent under which agencies were given broad leeway to interpret ambiguous laws. “In the old Chevron world, rules were adopted that extended statutory provisions beyond their scope,” the NCTA said. “Many of these Commission interpretations were then upheld on review based on the now-repudiated premise that courts were required to defer to an agency’s interpretation of an ambiguous statute.”

The NCTA acknowledged that the Supreme Court did not overturn prior cases that relied on Chevron deference but said the court “did not foreclose the ability of an agency to revisit its own prior orders and to eliminate or modify existing rules that exceed its statutory authority.”

In the NCTA’s view, one such rule that should be eliminated requires cable and satellite TV providers to specify the “all-in” price of services in ads and promotional materials. The rule was adopted last year to stop the TV-provider practice of using hidden fees, like Broadcast TV and Regional Sports Network charges, to conceal the full cost of video service.

“Adoption of the rule is a prime example of the Commission exceeding the bounds of the authority delegated to it by Congress,” the NCTA argued. The FCC rule goes beyond what Congress required in a 2019 law that said video providers must disclose the all-in price at the point of sale and in writing within 24 hours of a customer obtaining service, the NCTA said.

Carr is likely to listen closely to this argument—he dissented from last year’s rulemaking, saying the order “strays markedly from our statutory authority” and that “Congress considered and ultimately rejected extending the law to advertisements.”

The FCC received other rule-elimination requests from USTelecom and the wireless industry group CTIA. The FCC also heard from a group called the 21st Century Privacy Coalition—which was created by telecom industry members to lobby against strict privacy rules. The group has said its members include AT&T, CenturyLink, Comcast, Cox, CTIA, NCTA, T-Mobile, USTelecom, and Verizon.

The 21st Century Privacy Coalition told the FCC that a number of its rules on Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) “exceed the Commission’s statutory authority, are substantially outdated, and impose unnecessary and burdensome costs on telecommunications carriers without providing consumers with corresponding benefits.”

SpaceX asked the FCC to relax space station and earth station licensing procedures to make it easier to deploy low-Earth satellite networks like Starlink. SpaceX also said the FCC should “modernize outdated protections for legacy GSO [geostationary orbit] systems.” Amazon’s Kuiper Systems said that numerous regulations are “ripe for deleting or streamlining” in order to “reduce regulatory burdens on the satellite industry.”

Prison phone company Securus, meanwhile, wants a do-over of a 2024 order that lowered the prices of prison phone calls. The company said the FCC should reassess a prohibition “on the use of regulated revenue to fund critical safety and security measures, including recording, storage, and live monitoring, which is creating havoc for many law enforcement agencies.”

Securus also wants the FCC to lift a ban on “ancillary” charges that drive up the prices paid by prisoners and their families. Carr generally supported that 2024 order but expressed some concerns about the rate structure chosen by the FCC.

Scalpel or chainsaw?

Decisions to eliminate rules can be challenged in court. TechFreedom, a libertarian-leaning think tank, supported the goals of “Delete, Delete, Delete” but cautioned the FCC to move deliberately so that its actions don’t get overturned by judges.

“The FCC should be wary of overreach, as it may not survive appellate scrutiny under the Major Questions Doctrine,” the group said.

AT&T wants the FCC to move as fast as possible, as it urged the agency to overhaul its enforcement regime “without the delay imposed by notice-and-comment proceeding.” AT&T pointed to a Trump memorandum that said “agencies shall immediately take steps to effectuate the repeal of any regulation, or the portion of any regulation, that clearly exceeds the agency’s statutory authority or is otherwise unlawful.”

But TechFreedom said that US law “generally requires notice and comment rulemakings for changes to substantive rules.” There is a “good cause” exemption, but courts have only recognized this exemption “in limited circumstances, such as emergencies or where prior notice would subvert the statutory scheme.”

“When in doubt, the agency should seek public comments to ensure that it accounts for potential reliance interests upon the existing rule,” TechFreedom said.

Anna Gomez, a Democratic commissioner at the FCC, has urged a measured approach. “We want to take a scalpel, not a chainsaw, to the rules of protecting consumers and promoting competition,” she said at a conference last week, according to Light Reading.

Carr seems eager to push ahead with rule deletions. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Administration is unleashing a new wave of economic opportunity by ending the regulatory onslaught from Washington,” Carr said when he announced the plan. “For too long, administrative agencies have added new regulatory requirements in excess of their authority or kept lawful regulations in place long after their shelf life had expired… The FCC is committed to ending all of the rules and regulations that are no longer necessary.”