- Brendan Carr is now officially in charge at the Federal Communications Commission
- Deregulation is expected on the telecom front, but Carr must also contend with state efforts to regulate broadband
- He’s almost secured the Republican majority at the FCC – though he never really needed it to push most of his agenda
President Donald Trump’s second inauguration came and went, and that means Brendan Carr has officially taken the reins at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Much of Carr’s telecom policy agenda has already been laid out, featuring deregulation galore. Whether tighter regs on the state front could damper that game plan is tough to say.
Carr on Monday issued a statement saying the FCC has “important work ahead” on issues ranging from “tech and media regulation to unleashing new job opportunities for jobs and growth through agency actions on spectrum, infrastructure and the space economy.”
And he’s been fairly transparent about pushing forth policies that “[eliminate] regulatory drags on consumer broadband,” said Joe Kane, director of broadband and spectrum policy at ITIF.
Carr and telecom trade groups were thrilled to hear that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals effectively killed the FCC’s efforts to restore net neutrality and classify broadband providers as Title II carriers. However, the downside to not being classified as Title II carriers is that the FCC now has very little regulatory authority over broadband providers. So states are free to regulate broadband providers how they see fit, and the FCC doesn’t have any authority to preempt states.
A New York law regulating the price of low-income broadband just went into effect, paving the way for other states to take similar measures.
Kane thinks it’s possible Carr could suggest the FCC has authority to regulate broadband to take some kind of action on the N.Y. broadband law. But he did acknowledge he’s not sure how exactly Carr would go about doing that.
Actions Carr could take include “shoring up a Title I approach to broadband, perhaps with a more explicit attempt to preempt state laws, and rolling back the disparate impact portions of the digital discrimination rules,” Kane said.
Meaning he could suggest the FCC’s Title I policy “is intended to occupy the field of broadband regulation, not vacate it” to curb New York’s law and similar state legislation.
Now that Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has stepped down, congressional staffer Olivia Trusty is set to fill the FCC’s fifth seat and secure Carr’s Republican majority. Trusty still needs to go through the Senate process and the paperwork, so she won’t actually be on the panel until that’s done, which could take a few weeks.
But most of what Carr wants to do doesn’t even require an FCC majority, as New Street Research Policy Analyst Blair Levin has noted.
For example, Carr can crack down on Big Tech and news broadcasters, stop work on policies he disagrees with, like regs on bulk billing and data caps, and of course weigh in on the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.
“While he will have no power to force NTIA to adopt his point of view, Carr will be an accurate weathervane for gauging the winds at the NTIA on BEAD,” Levin said in a note to investors in December.
Trump has yet to announce a new NTIA administrator for BEAD, though New Street expects that’ll happen in the next several weeks.
Carr has also been pretty vocal about cutting the regulatory red tape from broadband programs and processes like permitting, of which operators have griped plenty about.
Federal technology and telecommunications programs “would benefit from stronger oversight and a fresh look at eliminating outdated regulations that are doing more harm than good,” Carr wrote in his Project 2025 chapter.
Trump seems to have gotten the ball rolling on the permitting front. In one of a series of executive orders he signed on Monday, the president called on agency leaders (including the Secretary of Commerce, who oversees NTIA) to “undertake all available efforts to eliminate all delays within their respective permitting processes.”
