In the March 20, 2025 edition of the ICORE Blog, we covered the FCC’s recently announced deregulatory initiative entitled “In Re: Delete, Delete, Delete”. Comments in that proceeding were filed on April 11,2025 by numerous interested parties covering a wide array of issues and recommendations. The following touches on some of the recommendations from the select comments that we’ve reviewed:
NTCA – NTCA offered recommendations on several sets of rules designed to reduce regulatory burdens and administrative costs as follows:
* Cost Accounting Rules – NTCA urged the Commission to review historic cost accounting rules that may be no longer relevant as a result of changing market conditions and new technologies. The comments emphasize the importance of Parts 32, 36, 65, and 69 to the ongoing provision of Universal Service and suggests a careful review and modifications while preserving essential frameworks for Universal Service and accountability.
* Digital Discrimination – NTCA recommends the elimination of rules adopted in November 2023 (see ICORE Blog 12/6/23, 2/22/24, and 4/10/24) and urges the Commission not to adopt further proposed rules pending the outcome of litigation related to the previously adopted rules.
* Broadband Labels – NTCA seeks modification of certain existing requirements (see ICORE Blogs 2/10/23, 3/31/23) and opposes the addition of additional requirements including multilingual and interactive labels.
* Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) – The comments suggest that the currently required reporting requirements (see ICORE Blog 2/12/25) are counterproductive and recommends the development of less burdensome reporting mechanisms for small providers.
* Cybersecurity – NTCA’s comments recommend replacing detailed plan submissions with a simple certification process citing concerns regarding the potential exposure of confidential information and unnecessary administrative overhead for telecommunication providers. (see ICORE Blogs 1/16/25 and 1/21/25)
* Data Breach Notifications – NTCA recommends limiting reporting to cases of likely financial harm and proposes a reporting threshold of 1000 or more customers.
The Small Company Coalition (SCC) – The SCC’s comments focus heavily on existing filing requirements and certifications and offer the following recommendations:
* Form 499Q – The SCC recommends that instead of the currently required quarterly filings, Form 499Q filings be reduced to once or twice per year or even completely eliminated relying instead solely on the annual Form 499A filing. Regarding the annual Form 499A filing, the SCC recommends changing the filing date from April 1st to the May or June timeframe.
* Form 395 – The SCC recommends that Form 395 be eliminated since reporting on the racial, gender, and ethnic characteristics of a company’s workforce is irrelevant to a provider’s ability to provide service.
* Form 555 – Similar to the comments regarding Form 395, the SCC recommends elimination of Form 555 stating that since there is a national verifier process this annual Lifeline Certification no longer serves a meaningful purpose.
* CPNI – The SCC acknowledges the importance of safe guarding customer’s data but takes exception with the current rules and the potentially significant fines that may be levied simply due to missing a filing date even though there was no negligence on the part of the company. The SCC recommends that the fines for filing related infractions be brought in line with other penalties at a significantly reduced level.
* Broadband Data Collection (BDC) – Regarding the semi-annual BDC filings, the SCC recommends that for carriers that have experienced very little change in their network, consideration should be given to allow the BDC filing to be done on an annual basis consistent with the HUBB filing on March 1st instead of semi-annually. Further, given the very granular nature of the BDC filing it should be reviewed to determine if all of the requested information is truly necessary.
* Certifications – The SCC’s comments point to the fact that an officer of a service provider must file numerous certifications throughout the year with the FCC, USAC, and/or NECA and estimates that there are 37 certifications that must be submitted at various times throughout the year. Further, the comments point out that there could be substantial penalties incurred by a provider for simply failing to submit a required certification even though the provider was in compliance with the underlying rules. The SCC recommends combining these multiple certifications into one annual filing in the form of a certification checklist to which an officer must attest compliance. ( This is a timely recommendation given the recent significant penalties assessed regarding the failure to certify performance testing results. See the ICORE Blog dated 4/4/25 for a discussion of this issue).
As mentioned above, the comments filed in this proceeding are voluminous as numerous interested parties made recommendations to the FCC. The discussion above is not a comprehensive overview of all of the comments filed but are particularly relevant to the rural ILEC industry. Reply comments in this proceeding are due by April 28, 2025. We will continue to monitor this proceeding and will provide updates as more information becomes available.
