U.S. telecom players balk at foreign-ownership reporting proposal

A wide range of telecom companies and trade associations in the US are opposed to a new FCC proposal that would require regular reassessments of a foreign carrier’s regulatory authorization to provide service in the US.

“T-Mobile appreciates the commission’s attention to the important public policy considerations underlying this proceeding and supports reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy of the commission’s records. At the same time, however, T-Mobile cautions against enacting new, burdensome, unnecessary and legally vulnerable requirements,” the company wrote to the FCC in a recent filing.

The company’s comments are noteworthy, given that Germany’s Deutsche Telekom announced earlier this year it is now the majority owner of T-Mobile in the US. That development prompted no additional public reviews or filings, according to T-Mobile officials.

Under current regulations, any company seeking to offer international services originating or terminating in the US must first obtain authorization to do so, per Section 214 of the Communications Act of 1934. Earlier this year, the FCC proposed several changes to that rule, including requiring carriers to renew their authorization every 10 years.

T-Mobile isn’t the only company sounding alarms over the proposal.

The FCC is proposing “sweeping, one-size-fits-all reporting and disclosure mandates by which the commission would regularly demand proprietary and confidential details about issues such as data storage, access to stored information, and cross-border facilities (and other matters) from all authorization holders, regardless of whether they pose any articulable risk,” Verizon wrote in its own filing. “Such over-inclusive reporting requirements would inevitably yield information in amounts that are vast to the point of being unwieldy, which in many cases would be unrelated to any telecommunications services and thus outside the scope of Section 214 and also devoid of any national security value.”

CTIA, the main trade association for big US wireless network operators, warned that aggressive rules in the area could stifle investment.

“Creating such an immense regulatory burden for the communications sector, as proposed, would hinder investment and innovation. This cannot be justified when the commission already has significant capabilities to account for national security considerations,” CTIA wrote. “The best course of action is to allow the expert national security agencies to request sensitive data when needed … instead of adopting the overbroad data collection regime” proposed by the FCC.

Concerns about espionage

The FCC’s proposal comes several years after the Commission moved to block Chinese telecom providers including China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and ComNet from operating in the US market. According to the agency, allowing the companies to operate in the US opened up the possibility of Chinese espionage into US telecom networks.

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