Delete, Delete, Delete; Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet; Restoring Internet Freedom; Implementation of the Local Competition Provisions in the Telecommunications Act of 1996; Interconnection Between Local Exchange Carriers and Commercial Mobile Radio Service Providers

<RULE> FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Parts 8, 20, and 51</CFR> <DEPDOC>[GN Docket No. 25-133; WC Docket Nos. 23-320, 17-108; CC Docket Nos. 96-48, 95-185; DA 25-613; FR ID 306349]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Delete, Delete, Delete; Safeguarding and Securing the Open Internet; Restoring Internet Freedom; Implementation of the Local Competition Provisions in the Telecommunications Act of 1996; Interconnection Between Local Exchange Carriers and Commercial Mobile Radio Service Providers</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Wireline Competition Bureau (Bureau) of the Federal Communication Commission (Commission) conforms certain rule parts in the Code of Federal Regulations to reflect the rules that are actually in effect as a result of the <E T="03">Ohio Telecom</E> and <E T="03">Iowa Utilities Board II</E> decisions. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective August 8, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Federal Communications Commission, 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For further information about the <E T="03">Order,</E> contact Aurélie Mathieu, Attorney Advisor, Competition Policy Division, Wireline Competition Bureau, at <E T="03">Aurelie.Mathieu@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Order in GN Docket No. 25-133; WC Docket No. 23-320; WC Docket No. 17-108; CC Docket No. 96-48; CC Docket No. 95-185; DA 25-613, adopted and released on July 11, 2025. The complete text of this document is available for download at <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-613A1.pdf.</E> <E T="03">Paperwork Reduction Act.</E> This document does not contain information collections subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), 44 U.S.C. 3501-3521. 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, 44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(4). <E T="03">Congressional Review Act.</E> The Bureau has determined, and the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, concurs, that this rule is non-major under the Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 804(2). The Commission will send a copy of this Order to Congress and the Government Accountability Office pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> By this Order, we conform Parts 8, 20, and 51 of the Commission's rules to court decisions nullifying certain provisions within those Parts. In the <E T="03">Delete, Delete, Delete</E> proceeding, the Commission made clear its goal to “review its rules to identify and eliminate those that are unnecessary in light of current circumstances.” The Wireline Competition Bureau takes this action in furtherance of that goal, finding that these rules “no longer have any operative effect,” and therefore should not remain in the Code of Federal Regulations. Specifically, this action will remove from our regulations approximately 5 pages, 2,991 words, and 41 rules or requirements. We first conform Parts 8 and 20 of the Commission's rules to the decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (Sixth Circuit) in <E T="03">Ohio Telecom Ass'n</E> v. <E T="03">FCC</E> ( <E T="03">Ohio Telecom</E> ), which set aside the <E T="03">Second Title II Order,</E> by restoring the text of those rules to how they would have read absent the changes adopted in the <E T="03">Second Title II Order</E> (89 FR 45404 (May 22, 2024)). The Commission adopted the <E T="03">Second Title II Order</E> on April 25, 2024, reclassifying broadband internet access service (BIAS) as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 (the Act) and instituting conduct rules on BIAS providers. The Commission published a summary of the <E T="03">Second Title II Order</E> in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on July 22, 2024. In accordance with normal procedure, the Code of Federal Regulations was revised to reflect the rules adopted in the <E T="03">Second Title II Order.</E> On August 1, 2024, the Sixth Circuit issued an order staying the effective date of the <E T="03">Second Title II Order</E> pending judicial review. On January 2, 2025, the Sixth Circuit issued its decision in <E T="03">Ohio Telecom</E> setting aside the <E T="03">Second Title II Order,</E> holding that, under the Act, broadband providers offer only an information service under the Act and that the Commission is not permitted to classify mobile broadband as a commercial mobile service. The Sixth Circuit issued its mandate on March 20, 2025, after denying a petition for rehearing en banc by the Intervenors. The Intervenors have sought and received an extension until August 8, 2025, to file any petition for writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court. As a result of the Sixth Circuit's stay order and final decision, the rules adopted in the <E T="03">Second Title II Order</E> never went into effect, and the text that currently appears in the Code of Federal Regulations does not accurately reflect the rules actually in effect. Accordingly, we restore Part 8 and Part 20 of the Commission's rules to reflect how they would read absent the changes adopted in the <E T="03">Second Title II Order,</E> accounting for amendments to Part 8 adopted in other Commission actions. When the Commission adopted the <E T="03">IoT Labeling Order</E> (89 FR 61242), it split Part 8 of the Commission's rules into Subpart A, which contained the existing transparency requirements, and Subpart B, which contained the new cybersecurity labeling requirements. Because the Sixth Circuit's decision setting aside the <E T="03">Second Title II Order</E> does not affect the rules contained in Subpart B, Appendix A only reflects changes to the relevant portions of Subpart A. We also rename the headings for Part 8 and Subpart A to conform to the restored rule language and find that good cause exists to forgo notice and comment to rename these headings given that the heading changes simply reflect the correct rule content and do not result in substantive changes. With respect to Part 20, although the <E T="03">Second Title II Order</E> did not amend the authority for that part, we make a non-substantive correction to the authority, changing section 302 to section 302a and find that good cause exists to forgo notice and comment to make this change since it is a non-substantive change that simply corrects the authority citation. We next remove requirements from Part 51 of our rules that were vacated by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals (Eighth Circuit) in <E T="03">Iowa Utilities Board II</E> roughly 25 years ago but never removed from the Code of Federal Regulations. <E T="03">Iowa Utilities Board II</E> was an intermediate step in the litigation concerning the Commission's rules adopted in the 1996 <E T="03">Local Competition Order</E> (67 FR 45476 (Aug. 29, 1996)). Although the Commission and other parties were successful in appealing portions of <E T="03">Iowa Utilities Board II</E> to the Supreme Court, no party, including the Commission, appealed the Eighth Circuit's rulings vacating § 51.303 or § 51.405(a), (c), (d) of the Commission's rules or the Eighth Circuit's reasoning for vacating §§ 51.513 and 51.611 unique to such sections. The Eighth Circuit based its holding vacating §§ 51.513 and 51.611 on two independent grounds, the first of which, judicial estoppel, was unique to such sections (as opposed to other sections that the Eighth Circuit considered) and never appealed. Section 51.405(b), the sole subsection of § 51.405 not vacated by <E T="03">Iowa Utilities Board II,</E> merely repeats the substance of the first sentence of § 251(f)(2) of the Act and is not cross-referenced elsewhere in the Commission's rules, and therefore serves no purpose. Accordingly, we delete §§ 51.303, 51.405, 51.513, and 51.611, finding that doing so has no effect on the scope and nature of the currently enforceable Commission requirements and simply effectuates the Eighth Circuit's action in <E T="03">Iowa Utilities Board II.</E> Pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(B), because we are simply conforming the text of the Commission's rules in the Code of Federal Regulations to reflect the rules that are actually in effect as a result of the <E T="03">Ohio Telecom</E> and <E T="03">Iowa Utilities Board II</E> decisions, not taking any independent action or exercising any discretion, we find that notice and public procedure are unnecessary for this action. For the same reason, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(d), this action will be effective immediately upon publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . We find “good cause” under 5 U.S.C. 553(d) to make the rules effective immediately upon publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . In determining whether good cause exists, an agency should “balance the necessity for immediate implementation against principles of fundamental fairness which require that all affected persons be afforded a reasonable amount of time to prepare for the effective date of its ruling.” Because the rule changes adopted in the <E T="03">Second Title II Order</E> have never been in effect and because the rules vacated in <E T="03">Iowa Utilities Board II</E> have been nullified for 25 years, we find that there will be no burden on the public from making these changes effective upon <E T="04">Federal Register</E> publication, while doing so will have the benefit of ensuring that inoperative ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━