Review of Submarine Cable Landing License Rules and Procedures To Assess Evolving National Security, Law Enforcement, Foreign Policy, and Trade Policy Risks

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 1</CFR> <DEPDOC>[OI Docket No. 24-523, MD Docket No. 24-524; FCC 25-49; FR ID 311053]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Review of Submarine Cable Landing License Rules and Procedures To Assess Evolving National Security, Law Enforcement, Foreign Policy, and Trade Policy Risks</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 Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ( <E T="03">FNPRM</E> ) that proposes to prevent national security risks from current and potential foreign adversaries, while encouraging the use of trusted technology and measures to further accelerate the buildout of submarine cables. The <E T="03">FNPRM</E> proposes a regulatory framework that would grant a blanket license to entities that own or operate Submarine Line Terminal Equipment (SLTEs), subject to certain exclusions and routine conditions, such as a tailored foreign adversary annual report. The <E T="03">FNPRM</E> proposes new certifications and routine conditions related to foreign adversaries to further protect submarine cables from national security risks. The <E T="03">FNPRM</E> also proposes an approach to expedite deployment of submarine cables that connect to the United States by presumptively excluding submarine cable applications from referral to the relevant Executive Branch agencies if they meet certain standards. The <E T="03">FNPRM</E> seeks comment on requiring existing licensees to remove from their submarine cable system covered equipment or services, within a specified timeframe prior to the expiration of the license. The <E T="03">FNPRM</E> also seeks comment on how the Commission can use its authority to incentivize and encourage the adoption and the use of trusted technologies produced and provided by the United States and its foreign allies. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments are due November 26, 2025; reply comments are due December 26, 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 this document. Comments may be filed using the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). You may submit comments, identified by OI Docket No. 24-523 or MD Docket No. 24-524, 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. 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 a.m. and 4 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. • <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> Desiree Hanssen, Office of International Affairs, Telecommunications and Analysis Division, at <E T="03">desiree.hanssen@fcc.gov</E> or at (202) 418-0887. For additional information concerning the Paperwork Reduction Act information collection requirements contained in this document, send an email to <E T="03">PRA@fcc.gov</E> or contact Cathy Williams at 202-418-2918 or <E T="03">Cathy.Williams@fcc.gov</E> . </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking ( <E T="03">FNPRM</E> ), in OI Docket No. 24-523, in MD Docket No. 24-524, FCC 25-49, adopted on August 7, 2025, and released on August, 13, 2025. The full text of this document is available online at <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-49A1.pdf</E> . The full text of this document is also available for public inspection and copying during business hours in the FCC Reference Center, 45 L Street NE, Washington, DC 20554. To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities, 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). <E T="03">Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act.</E> The Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act, Public Law 118-9, requires each agency, in providing notice of a rulemaking, to post online a brief plain-language summary of the proposed rule. The required summary of this FNPRM is available at <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/proposed-rulemakings</E> . To request materials in accessible formats for people with disabilities ( <E T="03">e.g.</E> 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. <E T="03">Ex Parte Presentations.</E> The proceeding this Notice initiates shall be treated as a “permit-but-disclose” proceeding in accordance with the Commission's <E T="03">ex parte</E> rules. <E T="03">See</E> 47 CFR 1.1200 <E T="03">et seq.</E> 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. <E T="03">Regulatory Flexibility Act.</E> The Commission has prepared an Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (IRFA) concerning the potential impact of rule and policy change proposals on small entities in the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. 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 Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking indicated on the first page of this document and must have a separate and distinct heading designating them as responses to the IRFA. <E T="03">Paperwork Reduction Act.</E> This document may also contain proposed new or modified information collection requirements. The Commission, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork burdens, invites the general public and OMB to comment on any information collection requirements contained in this document, as required by the PRA. 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. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> 1. In this item, we modernize and streamline the Commission's submarine cable rules to facilitate faster and more efficient deployment of submarine cables, while at the same time ensuring the security and resilience of this critical infrastructure. We recognize that investment in such infrastructure is vital to American prosperity and economic dynamism. The rules that we adopt today will ensure that the United States remains ready and able to deploy submarine cable infrastructure with increasing amounts of capacity to meet current and future internet and data demands so that t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 164k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━