Unanimous FCC Nod Expected for Team Telecom Order
A draft order on streamlining and standardizing the process by which FCC applications from foreign-owned companies are reviewed by the “Team Telecom” executive branch agencies is expected to be approved unanimously at Wednesday’s commissioners' meeting, said commission and industry officials.
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Few changes are expected from the draft version to the final. Reviews by the body consisting of the Department of Homeland Security, DOD and DOJ would have a specific timeline and standardized questions under the proposal, said Wiley attorney and former Team Telecom Chair Richard Sofield in an interview. Under the current process, Team Telecom reviews “can go off on tangents,” he said.
FCC and industry officials have said they expect the item to receive bipartisan support at the commission. Telecom attorneys might not all agree about the specifics but largely view the increased transparency and certainty for the review process as positives, Sofield said. USTelecom, NAB and the North American Submarine Cable Association have lobbied the agency since the draft was released but sought changes to certain language rather than opposing the revamped process.
Calls for a cleanup of the Team Telecom process have come from industry and FCC officials for years, and it was galvanized this time by a White House executive order as part of an effort to organize and stiffen U.S. security and the county’s response to China, said Roslyn Layton, co-founder of ChinaTechThreat.com. Reforming the review process “fell to the back burner” under previous administrations, she said. Layton, who worked on the Trump White House’s transition team, has filed in support of the FCC’s proposal in docket 16-155.
The order would create a 120-day timeline with a possible 90-day extension for reviews. Under the current system, companies have no clear idea when a possible deal would emerge from Team Telecom review, sometimes waiting years, said Sofield. A ticking clock doesn’t hurt the review process’s security goals, because the time frame is still longer than that for similar reviews by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., he said. If a company doesn’t measure up, the idea is there would be “a fast fail,” Layton said. The executive order decrees that companies undergoing Team Telecom review will be subjected to the same intelligence and thereat assessment as entities being reviewed by CFIUS. That sort of review has been situational under current Team Telecom rules, Sofield said.
The draft order would also require standardized review questions. Under the current process, questions are individually tailored to the application, which can cause uncertainty for companies, Sofield said. Standardized questions would be created through another public comment process, the draft said. The draft excludes certain types of applications from being referred to Team Telecom, such as companies that haven’t changed ownership since a previous review. USTelecom asks these exclusions apply retroactively, while NTIA says the FCC should still keep Team Telecom informed about such applications, even if it doesn’t refer them for review.