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

<RULE> FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Parts 0, 1, and 43</CFR> <DEPDOC>[OI Docket No. 24-523, MD Docket No. 24-524; FCC 25-49; FR ID 311064]</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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission or FCC) adopted a <E T="03">Report and Order</E> that updates the Commission's submarine cable licensing process and adopts rule changes to protect critical U.S. communications infrastructure against foreign adversary threats, specifically those posed by an entity that is owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary. The <E T="03">Report and Order</E> adopts a requirement for certain licensees to file an annual report about the licensee, submarine cable system ownership, and submarine cable operations. The <E T="03">Report and Order</E> adopts a one-time information collection for licensees to identify, among other things, how many entities currently own or operate submarine line terminal equipment (SLTEs) on existing licensed cable systems. The <E T="03">Report and Order</E> also requires applicants and licensees to certify that they have created, updated, and implemented a cybersecurity and physical security risk management plan and requires applicants to certify that the submarine cable system will not use equipment or services identified on the Commission's Covered List. With respect to the circuit capacity data collection, the <E T="03">Report and Order</E> adopts streamlined rules and eliminates the requirement for licensees to file a cable operator report about the capacity on a cable and clarify the types of capacity that need to be reported on an annual basis. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> These rules are effective November 26, 2025, except for amendatory instructions 6 (§ 1.767), 7 (§ 1.768), 10 (§ 1.70002), 11 (§ 1.70003), 12 (§§ 1.70005 and 1.70006), 13 (§ 1.70007), 14 (§§ 1.70008 and 1.70009), 15 (§§ 1.70011 through 1.70013), 16 (§ 1.70016), 17 (§ 1.70017), 18 (§ 1.70020), 19 (§§ 1.70023 and 1.70024), and 22 (§ 43.82), which are indefinitely delayed. The One-Time Information Collection will also be indefinitely delayed. The Commission will publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing the effective date of these rule sections and the One-Time Information Collection. </EFFDATE> <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, contact Cathy Williams at 202-418-2918 or <E T="03">Cathy.Williams@fcc.gov,</E> or send an email to <E T="03">PRA@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's <E T="03">Report and Order,</E> in OI Docket No. 24-523 and 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 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). <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 the United States remains “the unrivaled world leader in critical and emerging technologies—such as artificial intelligence.” With global competition for submarine cables increasing, connections to the United States should continue to be at the forefront of the submarine cable marketplace. Nonetheless, “[i]nvestment at all costs is not always in the national interest,” because of the potential for foreign adversary exploitation. We also recognize that “[e]conomic security is national security,” and thus protecting our communications networks against foreign threats is crucial. With these principles in mind today, we undertake the first major comprehensive update of our submarine cable rules since 2001. Since that time, technology, consumer expectations, international submarine cable traffic patterns, submarine cable infrastructure, and the foreign threat landscape have changed greatly. 2. To advance the Commission's comprehensive strategy to build a more secure and resilient communications supply chain, we adopt rules that place a strong emphasis on preventing and mitigating national security risks from foreign adversaries, while welcoming investment from United States allies and partners. We also lighten the regulatory burden on industry by modernizing and simplifying the submarine cable license approval process. 3. In this <E T="03">Report and Order,</E> we take action to protect the security, integrity, and resilience of submarine cable systems by targeting foreign adversary threats to this critical U.S. communications infrastructure. Specifically, we adopt a clear and consistent standard that incorporates the Department of Commerce's definitions for identifying a “foreign adversary,” “foreign adversary country,” and an individual or entity “owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary.” Using these definitions, we adopt rules that will better protect U.S. national security and critical U.S. communications infrastructure from foreign adversaries. 4. We update the Commission's submarine cable licensing process to protect critical U.S. communications infrastructure against foreign adversary threats. Specifically, we adopt a presumption that will preclude the grant of applications filed by any entity owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary; any entity identified on the Commission's “Covered List”;  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> and/or any entity whose authorization, license, or other Commission approval, whether or not related to operation of a submarine cable, was denied or revoked and/or terminated or is denied or revoked and/or terminated in the future on national security and law enforcement grounds, as well as the current and future affiliates or subsidiaries of any such entity. To ensure that applicants have the requisite character qualifications, we adopt a character presumptive disqualifying condition that an applicant is not qualified to hold a cable landing license if it meets certain criteria. We adopt a presumption that denial of an application is warranted where an applicant seeks to land a submarine cable in a foreign adversary country. Additionally, we adopt a condition prohibiting cable landing licensees from entering into a new or extension of an existing arrangement for Indefeasible Rights of Use (IRU) or leases for capacity where such arrangements would give an entity that is owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary, the ability to install, own, or manage Submarine Line Terminal Equipment (SLTE) on a submarine cable landing in the United States. For current licensees that meet the presumptive disqualifying criteria or whose cable lands in a foreign adversary country, we adopt a tool for increased oversight. We require these licensees to file an annual report (Foreign Adversary Annual Report) containing information about the licensee, submarine cable system ownership, and submarine cable operations. We also adopt a written hearing process to take action to deny or revoke and/or terminate a cable landing license and a process to address a cable landing license or a licensee that is insolvent or no longer exists. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Pursuant to sections 2(a) and (d) of the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, and §§ 1.50002 and 1.50003 of the Commission's rules, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (PSHSB) publishes a list of communications equipment and services that have been determined by one of the sources specified in that statute to pose an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of United States persons (“covered” equipment and services). <E T="03">See</E> Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, Public Law 116-124, 133 Stat. 158 (2020) (codified as amended at 47 U.S.C. 1601-1609 (Secure Networks Act); <E T="03">see also</E> 47 CFR 1.50002-1.50003; Federal Communications Commission, <E T="03">List of Equipment and Services Covered by Section 2 of the Secure Networks Act, https://www.fcc.gov/supplychain/coveredlist</E> (last updated June 5, 2025) ( <E T="03"> List of Covered Equipment and Services </E> ). PSHSB added the latest entry to the Covered Equipment or Ser ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 425k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━