Resilient Networks; Disruptions to Communications

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 4</CFR> <DEPDOC>[PS Docket Nos. 21-346, 15-80, ET Docket No. 04-35; FCC 25-45; FR ID 310513]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Resilient Networks; Disruptions to Communications</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 (FCC or Commission) commences a thorough review of the Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) and proposes changes to ensure the system is collecting information useful to disaster response without imposing unreasonable burdens on stakeholders. To reduce these burdens, this document proposes replacing the different DIRS worksheets with a single, dynamic form and introduces a “one-click” option for indicating there is “no change” from the preceding day's DIRS report. Further, this document proposes eliminating or modifying information fields that are duplicative or that may not request information that offers significant value for disaster response. The document further proposes reducing burdens by removing the requirement for mandatory DIRS filers to submit a final report within 24 hours of DIRS deactivation, and eliminating the reporting obligations for non-facilities-based providers. Other modernization proposals include suspending Network Outage Reporting System (NORS) reporting requirements for providers that timely report in DIRS Lite and removing barriers to outage information sharing for state agencies. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments are due on or before October 2, 2025 and reply comments are due on or before November 3, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Pursuant to §§ 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 the Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. Comments may be filed using the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). You may submit comments, identified by PS Docket Nos. 21-346 and 15-80; ET Docket No. 04-35 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">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. <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 Commission'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. • <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. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jeanne Stockman, Attorney Advisor, Cybersecurity and Communications Reliability Division, Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, at (202) 418-7830, or <E T="03">Jeanne.Stockman@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ( <E T="03">Third FNPRM</E> ), PS Docket Nos. 21-346 and 15-80; ET Docket No. 04-35, FCC 25-45, adopted August 4, 2025, and released August 6, 2025. The full text of this document is available by downloading the text from the Commission's website at: <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-45A1.pdf.</E> The full text of this document is available for public inspection and copying during regular business hours in the FCC Reference Center, 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 & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530 (voice). A RULE relating to 47 CFR part 4 is published elsewhere in this issue of the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">Ex Parte Rules</HD> The proceeding this <E T="03">Third FNPRM</E> initiates 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 § 1.1206(b). In proceedings governed by § 1.49(f) 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. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Regulatory Flexibility Analysis</HD> The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, as amended (RFA), requires that an agency prepare a regulatory flexibility analysis for notice-and-comment rulemaking proceedings, unless the agency certifies that “the rule will not, if promulgated, have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.” Accordingly, the Commission has prepared an Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (IRFA) concerning potential rule and policy changes contained in this <E T="03">Third FNPRM.</E> The IRFA is set forth in Appendix D of the FCC document, <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-proposes-modernization-nations-alerting-systems.</E> 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 <E T="03">Third FNPRM</E> and must have a separate and distinct heading designating them as responses to the IRFA. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Paperwork Reduction Act</HD> This Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking may contain revised information collection requirements. The Commission, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork burdens, invites the general public and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to comment on the information collection requirements contained in this document, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, Public Law 104-13. In addition, pursuant to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, Public Law 107-198, <E T="03">see</E> 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. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act</HD> Consistent with the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, Public Law 118-9, a summary of this <E T="03">Third FNPRM</E> will be available on <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/proposed-rulemakings.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Streamlining the DIRS Reporting Framework</HD> The <E T="03">Third FNPRM</E> proposes to redesign the DIRS user interface to offer manual DIRS filers the ability to file a single, dynamic form instead of the current array of ten separate worksheets concerning different types of service and infrastructure, and seek comment on this proposal. Under the current framework, when the Bureau activates DIRS, providers must log into DIRS the day after activation (and on each subsequent day during which DIRS remains active) to complete worksheets applicable to its infrastructure. As described below, each of the ten DIRS worksheets is about one page in length and includes multiple information fields for providers to complete, ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 60k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━