Review of the Commission's Assessment and Collection of Regulatory Fees for Fiscal Year 2025

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 1</CFR> <DEPDOC>[MD Docket No. 25-190; MD Docket No. 24-85; FCC 25-30; FRS ID 299099]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Review of the Commission's Assessment and Collection of Regulatory Fees for Fiscal Year 2025</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) seeks comment on revising the fee schedule of FY 2025 regulatory fees and on several additional regulatory fee issues, as described in the text below. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be submitted on or before July 7, 2025. Reply comments must be submitted on or before July 21, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Pursuant to sections 1.415 and 1.419 of the Commission's rules, 47 CFR 1.415, 1.419, interested parties may file comments and reply comments identified by MD Docket No. 23-159, by any of the following methods below. Comments and reply comments may be filed using the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). <E T="03">See Electronic Filing of Documents in Rulemaking Proceedings,</E> 63 FR 24121 (1998). 1. <E T="03">Comment Filing Procedures.</E> Pursuant to sections 1.415 and 1.419 of the Commission's rules, 47 CFR 1.415, 1.419, interested parties may file comments and reply comments on or before the dates indicated on the first page of this document. Comments may be filed using the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). • <E T="03">Electronic Filers:</E> Comments may be filed electronically using the internet by accessing the ECFS: <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/.</E> • <E T="03">Paper Filers:</E> Parties who choose to file by paper must file an original and one copy of each filing. • Filings can be sent by hand or messenger delivery, by commercial courier, or by the U.S. Postal Service. All filings must be addressed to the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission. • Hand-delivered or messenger-delivered paper filings for the Commission's Secretary are accepted between 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. by the FCC's mailing contractor at 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. All hand deliveries must be held together with rubber bands or fasteners. Any envelopes and boxes must be disposed of before entering the building. • Commercial courier deliveries (any deliveries not by the U.S. Postal Service) must be sent to 9050 Junction Drive, Annapolis Junction, MD 20701. • Filings sent by U.S. Postal Service First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, and Priority Mail Express must be sent to 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. 2. <E T="03">People with Disabilities:</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice), 202-418-0432 (TTY). 3. <E T="03">Materials in Accessible Formats.</E> To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (Braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice). 4. <E T="03">Availability of Documents.</E> Comments, reply comments, and <E T="03">ex parte</E> submissions will be available via ECFS. Documents will be available electronically in ASCII, Microsoft Word, and/or Adobe Acrobat. When the FCC Headquarters reopens to the public, these documents will also be available for public inspection during regular business hours in the FCC Reference Center, Federal Communications Commission, 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. For detailed instructions for submitting comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, <E T="03">see</E> the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Patrick Brogan, Office of Economics and Analytics (202) 418-7378. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's <E T="03">Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</E> (NPRM), FCC 25-30, MD Docket No. 24-85, MD Docket No. 25-190, adopted on June 4, 2025 and released on June 5, 2025. Comments, reply comments, and <E T="03">ex parte</E> submissions will be available via ECFS. Documents will be available electronically in ASCII, Microsoft Word, and/or Adobe Acrobat. When the FCC Headquarters reopens to the public, these documents will also be available for public inspection during regular business hours in the FCC Reference Center, Federal Communications Commission, 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities (Braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), send an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice). <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Administrative Matters</HD> 5. <E T="03">Ex Parte Information.</E> The proceeding initiated by this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, in which we seek comment on proposals as described below, shall be treated as a “permit-but-disclose” proceeding in accordance with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. Persons making <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations must file a copy of any written presentation or a memorandum summarizing any oral presentation within two business days after the presentation (unless a different deadline applicable to the Sunshine period applies). Persons making oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations are reminded that memoranda summarizing the presentation must (1) list all persons attending or otherwise participating in the meeting at which the <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentation was made, and (2) summarize all data presented and arguments made during the presentation. If the presentation consisted in whole or in part of the presentation of data or arguments already reflected in the presenter's written comments, memoranda, or other filings in the proceeding, the presenter may provide citations to such data or arguments in his or her prior comments, memoranda, or other filings (specifying the relevant page and/or paragraph numbers where such data or arguments can be found) in lieu of summarizing them in the memorandum. Documents shown or given to Commission staff during <E T="03">ex parte</E> meetings are deemed to be written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and must be filed consistent with section 1.1206(b) of the Commission's rules. In proceedings governed by section 1.49(f) of the Commission's rules or for which the Commission has made available a method of electronic filing, written <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations and memoranda summarizing oral <E T="03">ex parte</E> presentations, and all attachments thereto, must be filed through the electronic comment filing system available for that proceeding, and must be filed in their native format ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> .doc, .xml, .ppt, searchable .pdf). Participants in this proceeding should familiarize themselves with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. 6. <E T="03">Regulatory Flexibility Act.</E> The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, as amended (RFA), requires that an agency prepare a regulatory flexibility analysis for notice and comment rulemakings, unless the agency certifies that “the rule will not, if promulgated, have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.” Accordingly, we have prepared an Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (IRFA) concerning the potential impact of rule and policy changes contained in this NPRM. The IRFA is set forth in Section VI. The Commission invites the general public, in particular small businesses, to comment on the IRFA. Comments must be filed by the deadlines for comments on the NPRM indicated on the first page of this document and must have a separate and distinct heading designating them as responses to the IRFA. 7. <E T="03">Paperwork Reduction Act.</E> This document does not contain any proposed new or substantively modified information collections subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), Public Law 104-13. In addition, therefore, it does not contain any new or modified information collection burden for small business concerns with fewer than 25 employees, pursuant to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, Public Law 107-198, see 44 U.S.C. § 3506(c)(4). <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Introduction</HD> 8. Each fiscal year, the Commission is required to collect regulatory fees in an amount equal to its annual salaries and expenses (S&E) appropriation by the end of September. Pursuant to section 9 of the Communications Act of 1934, as amended (Communications Act or Act), and the Full Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2025, the Commission must collect $390,192,000, which is an amount equal to its fiscal year (FY) 2025 salaries and expenses (S&E) appropriation. The Act requires the Commission to assess and collect regulatory fees to recover the costs of carrying out its activities in the total amounts provided for in Appropriations Acts. 9. In this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), we propose and seek comment on the regulatory fees and methodology to assess and collect $390,192,000 in congressionally required regulatory fees for FY 2025, as set forth in Tables 3, 4, and 7. Consistent with the Commission's long-standing regulatory fee methodology, staff has again undertaken a high-level, yet comprehensive, analysis of the work being performed by Commission employees to determine if identifiable full time equivalent (FTE) time is related to th ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 170k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━