Review of Foreign Ownership Policies for Broadcast, Common Carrier and Aeronautical Radio Licensees

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 1</CFR> <DEPDOC>[GN Docket No. 25-149; FCC 25-26; FR ID 294037]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Review of Foreign Ownership Policies for Broadcast, Common Carrier and Aeronautical Radio Licensees</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 or FCC) adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ( <E T="03">NPRM</E> ), in which it seeks comment on or proposes updates to set clear expectations about the Commission's review in both common carrier and broadcast licensees and on other updates that apply only to broadcast licensees. With regard to common carrier licensees, the <E T="03">NPRM</E> seeks comment on or proposes to amend the rules to codify existing policy regarding which entity is the controlling U.S. parent; codify the Commission's advance approval policy regarding certain deemed voting interests; require identification of trusts and trustees; extend the remedial procedures and methodology to privately held companies; add requirements regarding the contents of remedial petitions; require the filing of amendments as a complete restatement to petitions for declaratory ruling; and clarify U.S. residency requirements. For broadcast licensees only, the <E T="03">NPRM</E> seeks comment on how the Commission should process applications filed by a broadcast licensee during the pendency of a remedial petition for declaratory ruling; and other foreign ownership considerations related to processing applications for NCE and LPFM stations. The <E T="03">NPRM</E> proposes to make it easier for entities to understand and navigate the FCC's foreign ownership rules. The FCC believes that this proceeding will avoid inconsistent outcomes; reduce costs; and facilitate the Commission's public interest analysis. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments may be filed on or before July 23, 2025, and reply comments may be filed on or before August 22, 2025. Written comments on the Paperwork Reduction Act proposed information collection requirements must be submitted by the public, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and other interested parties on or before August 22, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by GN Docket No. 25-149, by any of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Filers:</E> Comments may be filed electronically using the Internet by accessing the ECFS: <E T="03">http://apps.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. <E T="03">All filings must be addressed to the Secretary, Federal Communications Commission.</E> • 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 overnight mail (other than U.S. Postal Service Express Mail and Priority Mail) 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. • <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 and Governmental Affairs Bureau at (202) 418-0530. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Fara Mohsenikolour, Telecommunications and Analysis Division, Office of International Affairs, at <E T="03">Fara.Mohsenikolour@fcc.gov</E> or (202) 418-1429. For additional information concerning the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) information collection requirements contained in this document, contact Cathy Williams at 202-418-2918, or via the Internet at <E T="03">Cathy.Williams@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Order and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ( <E T="03">NPRM</E> ), GN Docket No. 25-149; FCC 25-26, adopted on April 28, 2025, and released on April 29, 2025. The full text of this document is available for public inspection and copying via ECFS at <E T="03">http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs</E> and the FCC's website at <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-26A1.pdf.</E> Documents will be available electronically in ASCII, Microsoft Word, and/or Adobe Acrobat. Alternative formats are available for people with disabilities (Braille, large print, electronic files, audio format), by sending an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or calling the Commission's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau at (202) 418-0530 (voice), (202) 418-0432 (TTY). <E T="03">Initial Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 Analysis.</E> This <E T="03">NPRM</E> proposes new or modified information collection requirements. The Commission, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork burdens and pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, Public Law 104-13, invites the general public and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to comment on these information collection requirements. In addition, pursuant to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, Public Law 107-198, see 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(4), we seek specific comment on how we might further reduce the information collection burden for small business concerns with fewer than 25 employees. <E T="03">Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act.</E> Consistent with the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, Public Law 118-9, a summary of this document will be available on <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/proposed-rulemakings.</E> <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4). The Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, Public Law 118-9 (2023), amended section 553(b) of the Administrative Procedure Act. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</HD> In this <E T="03">NPRM,</E> we propose or seek comment on updates to set clear expectations about the Commission's review under section 310(b) of the Act of foreign investment in both common carrier and broadcast licensees and on other updates that apply only to broadcast licensees. Additionally, this <E T="03">NPRM</E> seeks comment on other opportunities to improve the foreign ownership rules or ways we can reduce regulatory burdens, including whether there are any service-specific differences that would warrant alternative approaches for particular categories of licensees. Through these efforts, we strive to increase the likelihood of more fulsome initial submissions from petitioners to reduce inefficient follow-up discussions between Commission staff and petitioners to ensure compliance with section 310(b) of the Act. <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Common Carrier and Broadcast Licensees</HD> Below, as applied to both common carrier and broadcast licensees, we propose to codify certain policies and practices with respect to the Commission's foreign ownership rules for common carrier and broadcast licensees subject to 310(b) of the Act and seek comment on possible approaches to other aspects of the rules. This <E T="03">NPRM</E> seeks comment on or proposes to amend the rules to: (1) codify existing policy regarding which entity is the controlling U.S. parent; (2) codify the Commission's advance approval policy regarding certain deemed voting interests; (3) require identification of trusts and trustees; (4) extend the remedial procedures and methodology to privately held companies; (5) add requirements regarding the contents of remedial petitions; (6) require the filing of amendments as a complete restatement to petitions for declaratory ruling; and (7) clarify U.S. residency requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Controlling U.S. Parent Definition</HD> To receive more fulsome and complete initial petitions, reduce additional submissions by the petitioners, and to streamline processing, we propose to define the <E T="03">controlling U.S. parent</E> in our rules. In the <E T="03">2016 Foreign Ownership Report and Order,</E> the Commission, among other things, clarified the citizenship and filing requirements for obtaining prior approval from the Commission for foreign ownership in the controlling U.S. parent of a licensee that would exceed the 25 percent benchmarks in section 310(b)(4). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Although the Commission adopted definitions for several terms related to its review of foreign ownership under section 310(b), including “public company,” “subsidiary,” and “control,” the Commission did not adopt a definition of “ <E T="03">controlling U.S. parent</E> ” at that time. Since 2016, the overwhelming majority of petitions for declaratory ruling submitted under section 310(b)(4) have identified a <E T="03">controlling U.S. parent</E> at the lowest permissible level in the vertical ownership chain while other petitions submitted have identified an entity higher up in the vertical ownership chain. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> These different approaches to identifying the <E T="03">controlling U.S. parent</E> often result in considerable additional processing time to ensure that the petitioner has properly identified the controlling U.S. parent of the licensee(s); to assess a license ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 290k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━