The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is expediting its transition from legacy copper lines to modern network infrastructure after announcing a new series of actions to help streamline its modernization efforts.
The FCC has been facilitating the transition away from copper phone lines for several years now, starting with the 2015 Technology Transitions Order. This initiative revised the agency’s copper retirement rules to promote the adoption of advanced technologies while ensuring consumer protections.
New actions announced by the FCC on March 20 include streamlining procedures for copper line retirement, expanding retirement criteria, and waiving outdated paperwork and notification requirements that didn’t provide a clear consumer benefit. The actions will also allow providers to retire copper networks when services are available on a bundled basis instead of just on a stand-alone basis.
“Outdated FCC rules have left Americans sitting in the slow lane for far too long,” Brendan Carr, chairman of the FCC, said in a statement. “Those FCC rules have forced providers to pour resources into maintaining aging and expensive copper line networks instead of investing in the modern, high-speed infrastructure that Americans want and deserve.”
“We are streamlining the process for retiring decades-old copper networks so that providers can transition consumers and their resources to new, high-speed networks on a faster timeline,” he continued. “We do so by clearing some of the regulatory underbrush that needlessly delays the retirement of those copper networks.”
The FCC vowed to maintain consumer protections with the new streamlined promises, noting that it will continue to require interoperability and prevent price hikes from providers by ensuring that consumers on the new networks have “access to services at similar or lower price points.
Carr’s move to eliminate barriers for providers follows his announcement earlier this month of the commission’s plan for broad deregulation – coined “Delete, Delete, Delete.”
The deregulation plan asks for public comment “on deregulatory initiatives that would facilitate and encourage American firms’ investment in modernizing their networks, developing infrastructure, and offering innovative and advanced capabilities,” according to the document.
