Is the FCC Ready for the Digital Age? A 90-Year-Old Agency Faces Modern Challenges

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In the heart of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Communications Act of 1934, a piece of legislation from a world of crackling radio broadcasts and party-line telephones.

The Act created the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and gave it a monumental task: to regulate the nation’s airwaves and wires to make available “so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination… a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service” with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.

To guide this mission, Congress provided an ambiguous standard: the FCC must act in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.”

For 90 years, that flexible mandate has allowed the FCC to adapt, stretching its authority to cover technologies its creators could never have imagined, from color television and communications satellites to mobile phones and the internet.

Yet today, as the agency confronts a landscape defined by fiber-optic cables, 5G networks, artificial intelligence, and global technology platforms, a fundamental question looms: Is a regulatory body forged in the analog era still relevant, or does its 20th-century foundation need a complete overhaul to meet the challenges of the digital age?

The very ambiguity of the “public interest” standard—the source of the FCC’s adaptability—has also become the central battleground for its most contentious modern debates, making the agency a focal point for the technological, economic, and political forces shaping American life.

The FCC’s Massive Evolution

The FCC of today is a sprawling administrative body whose structure and responsibilities bear only a passing resemblance to the agency established in 1934. It is an independent U.S. government agency, overseen by Congress, but its direction is steered by a board of five commissioners.

These commissioners are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for five-year terms. A crucial structural feature, designed to ensure a degree of political balance, dictates that no more than three commissioners can belong to the same political party.

The President designates one of these five to serve as Chairman, a position of immense power that controls the agency’s agenda, staff, and public voice.

From Radio to Digital Everything

While its original mandate focused on telephone monopolies and the burgeoning field of radio, the FCC’s modern jurisdiction covers nearly every aspect of the digital ecosystem. Its functions are organized into a complex web of bureaus and offices that reflect the technological realities of the 21st century.

The agency’s organizational chart reveals an institution that has continually bolted on new responsibilities as technology creates them. It now includes a Space Bureau to handle satellite communications, an Office of Economics and Analytics to guide market policy, and a Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau to address network reliability and security—functions that were simply unimaginable in the 1930s.

This evolution demonstrates the agency’s attempt to remain relevant by mirroring the complexity of the industry it regulates, but it also raises profound questions about whether its foundational legal authority has expanded commensurately with its duties.

Then vs. Now: The Scope Explosion

What the FCC Does Today

Today, the FCC’s core functions are vast and touch the lives of every American:

Broadband and Internet Access: The commission sets national policies around the availability, speed, and affordability of high-speed internet. This includes major initiatives like the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which allocates billions of dollars to expand network infrastructure into rural and underserved communities.

Wireless and Mobile Communications: The FCC acts as the nation’s traffic cop for the airwaves, managing the licensing and use of the radio frequency spectrum. This invisible infrastructure is the lifeblood of all wireless services, from mobile phones and Wi-Fi to 5G networks and satellite communications.

Public Safety and Emergency Services: The agency plays a critical role in national security and emergency response. It ensures the reliability of 911 systems, oversees the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), and sets technical standards for first responder communications.

Consumer Protection: The FCC is the primary federal body tasked with protecting consumers from unfair or deceptive practices in the communications sector. Its most visible work in this area is the aggressive campaign against illegal robocalls and spam text messages.

Universal Service: Through the Universal Service Fund (USF), a fee collected from telecommunications providers, the FCC subsidizes services to high-cost rural areas, low-income households (the Lifeline program), schools and libraries (the E-Rate program), and rural healthcare facilities.

This dramatic expansion from a regulator of a few key industries to the overseer of the entire digital communications infrastructure places the FCC at the center of the modern economy. Its relevance is tested daily in policy battles that determine how Americans connect, communicate, and access information.

Testing Relevance: The FCC’s Modern Track Record

In an era of rapid technological change, the FCC’s relevance is not merely a matter of its legal mandate but of its practical effectiveness. The agency’s performance on key contemporary issues—from the daily annoyance of robocalls to the critical need for rural broadband and reliable emergency services—offers a compelling, if mixed, portrait of its capabilities and limitations.

The War on Robocalls: A Success Story

Few issues unite American consumers in frustration more than the daily deluge of unwanted robocalls. For the FCC, this issue has become its top consumer protection priority and a showcase for the agency’s power when its authority is clear and its mission enjoys broad bipartisan support.

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991 provides a firm statutory foundation for the FCC’s actions, allowing it to move decisively in a way that is often impossible in more legally ambiguous areas like net neutrality.

The FCC has waged a multi-front war against illegal robocallers, deploying a combination of technology mandates, aggressive enforcement, and regulatory updates:

1. Technology Mandates

The commission has required voice service providers to implement the STIR/SHAKEN framework, a technology that authenticates caller ID information to combat the illegal “spoofing” of phone numbers, which scammers use to trick consumers into answering calls that appear to be local.

2. Empowering Blockades

The agency has empowered phone companies to block calls that are highly likely to be illegal by default, before they ever reach a consumer’s phone. It has also put immense pressure on “gateway providers”—the companies that serve as the on-ramps for international call traffic into the U.S. network—by issuing cease-and-desist orders that give them 48 hours to stop carrying known illegal robocall campaigns or face having all of their traffic blocked by other providers.

3. Aggressive Enforcement

The FCC has levied hundreds of millions of dollars in fines against illegal robocallers, including a record-breaking $225 million fine against a group of telemarketers responsible for approximately 1 billion illegally spoofed calls related to health insurance.

4. Closing Loopholes

Recognizing that scammers were exploiting legal gray areas, the FCC has moved to close them. The FCC adopted a new “one-to-one” consent rule intended to close the so-called “lead generator loophole,” but the rule was vacated by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on January 24, 2025, just three days before its scheduled implementation. The FCC has since stayed the rule until January 2026.

This practice allowed a consumer’s single click on a website to be interpreted as consent to receive robocalls from dozens or even hundreds of unassociated businesses. The new rule requires that consumers provide individual, express written consent to each specific company that wishes to contact them.

Adapting to New Threats

In a forward-looking move, the FCC unanimously adopted a Declaratory Ruling in February 2024 clarifying that calls made with AI-generated voices are considered “artificial” under the TCPA. This decision makes the use of voice cloning technology in robocall scams illegal without prior express consent, proactively addressing a new and growing threat to consumers.

The sustained and multi-faceted campaign against robocalls demonstrates an agency operating at peak effectiveness. The combination of a clear legislative mandate, widespread political support, and a direct, tangible benefit to consumers has allowed the FCC to make significant inroads against a complex and persistent problem.

Rural Broadband: A Mixed Record

While the war on robocalls highlights the FCC’s strengths, its long-running effort to close the digital divide reveals some of its most significant weaknesses. Ensuring that all Americans have access to high-speed internet is a core part of the agency’s universal service mission, yet a stark gap persists: a 2023 report noted that 22.3% of Americans in rural areas lack access to broadband at the FCC’s benchmark speed of 25 megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload, compared to just 1.5% in urban areas.

To address this, the FCC has overseen massive subsidy programs that channel billions of dollars from the Universal Service Fund to private Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Programs like the Connect America Fund (CAF) and the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) were designed to incentivize companies to build out network infrastructure in high-cost areas where a purely market-based approach would not be profitable.

However, the execution and oversight of these programs have drawn sharp criticism and exposed a critical flaw in the FCC’s approach: a reliance on unverified, self-reported data from the very companies receiving the subsidies.

The Troubling Data

A groundbreaking 2024 independent academic study of the multi-billion dollar CAF program painted a damning picture of its effectiveness. Researchers found that:

1. The actual “serviceability rate”—the percentage of subsidized addresses that could in fact receive service from the funded ISP—was only 55%. This suggests that nearly half of the homes that taxpayer money paid to connect were still left without access.
2. Even more alarmingly, the “compliance rate”—the percentage of addresses where the service offered actually met the FCC’s own minimum requirements for speed and price—was a mere 33%. In other words, two-thirds of the locations that ISPs had “certified” as served did not receive the level of service they were paid to provide.

These failures demonstrate that for years, the FCC acted more like a passive funding dispenser than a rigorous project manager, accepting industry certifications at face value without a robust, independent verification system. This led to billions in wasted funds and left millions of rural Americans on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Course Correction

In response to these and other critiques, the FCC launched the Rural Broadband Accountability Plan in early 2022. This initiative aims to rectify past mistakes by significantly increasing audits and verifications of subsidized projects, including on-site inspections, and for the first time, making the results of these audits and network performance tests public.

This move represents a tacit admission of the previous system’s failures and a pivot toward more stringent oversight. The experience serves as a crucial, and costly, lesson as the nation embarks on the even larger $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in coordination with the FCC.

Next Generation 911: Essential Coordination

In stark contrast to the controversies surrounding broadband subsidies, the FCC’s role in modernizing the nation’s 911 system showcases its indispensable function as a national technical coordinator and standards-setter. Unlike market-driven services, a nationwide emergency system requires a central authority to ensure that a call for help works seamlessly, regardless of the technology used or the location of the caller.

The FCC is currently overseeing the complex, nationwide transition from legacy analog 911 systems to Next Generation 911 (NG911). NG911 is an internet protocol (IP)-based system that can receive not only voice calls but also text messages, images, and video, providing first responders with far more information than ever before.

The commission’s work in this area is a clear demonstration of its modern relevance. Key FCC actions have been critical to paving the way for this transition:

Implementing Kari’s Law

In 2019, the FCC adopted rules to implement Kari’s Law, which addresses a dangerous problem in large buildings with multi-line telephone systems (MLTS), such as hotels, hospitals, and office campuses. The law requires these systems to be configured to allow users to dial 911 directly, without having to first dial a prefix like “9” to get an outside line. It also requires the system to send a notification to a central point on-site, like a front desk or security office, when a 911 call is made.

Implementing RAY BAUM’S Act

At the same time, the FCC adopted rules pursuant to Section 506 of RAY BAUM’S Act to dramatically improve location accuracy for 911 calls. The rules require that “dispatchable location” information—meaning a street address, and where applicable, a floor level, room, or suite number—is transmitted with 911 calls from a variety of systems, including MLTS, fixed telephone lines, and Voice over IP (VoIP) services. Getting this precise information to first responders is critical to reducing response times and saving lives.

Setting NG911 Technical Standards

The FCC is actively developing the rules of the road for the new NG911 networks. In 2025, new compliance standards took effect requiring public safety answering points (PSAPs) to transition to Emergency Services IP Networks (ESInets) and to route calls based on the precise geographic location of the caller, rather than relying on less accurate cell tower triangulation.

These rules are designed to ensure that as different jurisdictions upgrade their systems, the resulting national network is reliable, resilient, and, crucially, interoperable.

Without a national coordinator like the FCC setting these baseline standards, the transition to NG911 would risk creating a fragmented and incompatible patchwork of local systems, undermining the very purpose of a universal emergency number. This essential, non-controversial function highlights a core area where the FCC’s authority is both necessary and highly effective.

The Modernization Challenge

While the FCC has demonstrated its relevance in specific policy arenas, a deeper debate questions whether its fundamental legal and structural framework, designed for the telephone and radio era, is adequate for the complexities of the internet age. The agency’s struggles with defining its authority over broadband, managing the invaluable resource of spectrum, and adapting to a wave of new technologies like satellite internet and AI have fueled calls for fundamental reform.

Net Neutrality: A Case Study in Legal Chaos

No issue better illustrates the strain on the FCC’s 90-year-old foundation than the decade-long battle over net neutrality. The principle itself is straightforward: internet service providers should treat all data that travels over their networks equally, without blocking or slowing down specific applications, and without creating “fast lanes” for companies willing to pay a premium.

The regulatory fight, however, has been a case study in legal contortionism and political whiplash. The entire debate hinges on a question rooted in the Communications Act: should broadband internet be classified as a lightly regulated Title I “information service” or as a more heavily regulated Title II “telecommunications service,” akin to a public utility like the telephone network?

The answer to this question determines the extent of the FCC’s power, and it has changed with every shift in the political party controlling the White House.

This has resulted in a dizzying cycle of regulation, deregulation, and litigation that has created massive uncertainty for the entire internet ecosystem.

The Regulatory Whiplash Timeline

This endless loop is not merely a product of partisan disagreement; it is a direct consequence of trying to apply a 1934 law to a 21st-century technology. The Communications Act provides no clear guidance on how to regulate the internet, forcing the FCC to reinterpret old definitions in ways that are perpetually vulnerable to legal and political challenges.

The January 2025 court ruling striking down the FCC’s latest attempt to reinstate net neutrality was the culmination of this struggle. The court effectively declared that the FCC cannot invent for itself a power that Congress never explicitly granted.

This decision has created a policy vacuum at the federal level, ceding the issue to a fragmented collection of state laws and placing the responsibility for creating a stable, national internet policy squarely on the shoulders of a deeply divided Congress. The saga proves that the Communications Act is fundamentally inadequate for the task, and without legislative modernization, regulatory stability for the internet remains out of reach.

Spectrum: Managing the Invisible Infrastructure

The electromagnetic spectrum is a finite, invisible public resource that is the foundation of all modern wireless communication. The FCC’s role as the manager of this resource—deciding who gets to use which airwaves and for what purpose—is one of its most powerful and economically significant functions.

The primary tool the FCC uses to assign commercial spectrum licenses is the auction. These auctions have been an unqualified success in generating revenue and enabling the rollout of new generations of wireless technology.

The C-Band Auction (Auction 107), which concluded in early 2021, stands as a monumental example. The auction made available 280 megahertz of prime mid-band spectrum, a frequency range considered critical for deploying high-capacity, wide-coverage 5G networks.

The demand was unprecedented, with the auction generating a staggering $81.1 billion in net bids from wireless carriers like Verizon and AT&T. This single event not only paved the way for a massive 5G buildout across the country but also underscored the FCC’s immense economic influence.

The Revenue vs. Public Interest Tension

However, the success of auctions has created a powerful incentive structure that raises complex policy questions. The immense revenue generated creates intense political and commercial pressure to continuously identify and auction more licensed spectrum, primarily for the benefit of large mobile carriers.

This focus can conflict with another crucial public interest goal: preserving and expanding unlicensed spectrum. Unlicensed bands are the open highways of the airwaves, powering technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and countless Internet of Things (IoT) devices that do not require a subscription or permission from a carrier to operate.

This tension came to a head recently when Congress restored the FCC’s auction authority, which had lapsed. The new law, passed in July 2025, not only restored the authority through 2034 but also included a mandate requiring the FCC to auction specific bands of spectrum.

This move sparked significant controversy because some of the spectrum targeted for sale is currently used for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed services, potentially threatening the future of these ubiquitous technologies.

This situation highlights a fundamental conflict in the FCC’s role: is it primarily a revenue generator for the U.S. Treasury, a facilitator for large commercial wireless companies, or a steward of a public resource for a diverse range of licensed and unlicensed uses? The agency’s actions are a constant balancing act, with the powerful, well-funded interests of the mobile industry often having the loudest voice.

Performance Gaps

Furthermore, even in its core function of spectrum management, the FCC has faced criticism. A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the agency lacked clear, measurable goals and strategies for improving the performance of radio receivers.

More robust receivers would be less susceptible to interference, allowing different services to operate closer together and enabling more efficient use of the increasingly crowded airwaves.

New Frontiers: The FCC’s Expanding Role

As technology evolves, the FCC is being pushed into new regulatory frontiers that are reshaping its identity and mission. The agency’s approach to satellite broadband, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence offers a glimpse into its future and provides a powerful argument for its continued relevance.

Satellite Broadband Revolution

The rise of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations, most notably SpaceX’s Starlink, is revolutionizing how internet access can be delivered to remote and rural areas. The FCC has adopted a largely proactive and innovation-friendly stance, working to foster this burgeoning industry.

It has proposed opening up more than 20,000 megahertz of new spectrum for satellite-based services and is developing regulatory frameworks to enable partnerships between satellite operators and terrestrial wireless providers.

This approach aims to create hybrid networks that can finally bring high-speed internet coverage to the hardest-to-reach corners of the country.

Cybersecurity: A National Security Role

Perhaps the most significant evolution in the FCC’s role is its transformation into a key cybersecurity regulator. As communications networks have become designated as critical national infrastructure, the FCC has increasingly focused on protecting them from foreign adversaries and cyber threats.

This shift moves the agency into a domain traditionally occupied by homeland security and intelligence agencies. The FCC has:

• Established a Privacy and Data Protection Task Force to coordinate its efforts on data breaches and network vulnerabilities.

• Asserted its authority under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) to require telecommunications carriers to secure their networks from unlawful access, specifically citing threats from state-sponsored actors in the People’s Republic of China.

• Proposed rules that would require submarine cable operators and other communications providers to develop, implement, and annually certify comprehensive cybersecurity risk management plans.

• Taken aggressive enforcement action in response to major data breaches. A landmark 2024 settlement with T-Mobile over a series of breaches not only included a multi-million dollar fine but also required the company to make significant cybersecurity upgrades, including adopting a modern “zero-trust” security architecture and implementing phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication.

Artificial Intelligence: Early Adaptation

The FCC’s engagement with AI is still in its early stages, but it has already demonstrated a willingness to apply its existing authority to novel AI-driven harms. The February 2024 ruling that AI-generated voices in robocalls are illegal was a landmark decision, showing how the agency can adapt decades-old laws like the TCPA to regulate emerging technologies without needing new legislation from Congress.

This quiet but profound shift from a purely economic and communications regulator to a national security and critical infrastructure protection agency is a powerful argument for the FCC’s enduring importance. However, it also raises critical questions about whether the agency possesses the necessary technical expertise, resources, and statutory authority to effectively fulfill this new, high-stakes mission.

Structural Problems: Why the FCC Struggles

Beyond specific policy debates, the FCC faces deep-seated structural and political challenges that increasingly lead to calls for its fundamental modernization. Issues of partisan gridlock, industry influence, and a framework that appears outdated when compared to international counterparts suggest that the agency’s internal mechanics may be as much in need of an update as its legislative mandate.

The Partisan Trap

The FCC’s five-commissioner structure, with a 3-2 majority for the President’s party, was designed for an era of greater political consensus. In today’s hyper-partisan environment, this structure has become a primary driver of regulatory instability and paralysis.

When a commissioner’s seat becomes vacant, which can happen for extended periods due to delays in the presidential appointment and Senate confirmation process, the agency is often left in a 2-2 deadlock. This partisan gridlock can halt all progress on major, contentious policy issues, leaving the agency unable to act on everything from net neutrality to broadband reform.

The Chairman’s Outsized Power

Compounding this issue is the immense power vested in the Chairman, who single-handedly sets the agency’s agenda. In recent years, chairs from both parties have been accused of leveraging this power to pursue political goals through public pressure, threats of investigation, and other means that bypass the need for a formal vote by the full commission.

This has led to accusations of the FCC being wielded as a “blatantly partisan tool” and has fueled intense political battles. For instance, Democratic leaders in Congress have demanded the resignation of a Republican chairman for what they termed a “corrupt abuse of power” in pressuring a broadcast network, while Republican commissioners have consistently dissented from nearly all major rulemakings under Democratic leadership.

The Whiplash Effect

The result is a vicious cycle. Major rules are enacted on narrow 3-2 party-line votes, only to be immediately targeted for reversal the moment the opposition party takes control of the White House. This constant policy whiplash creates profound uncertainty for a multi-trillion-dollar communications industry that relies on a stable regulatory environment to make long-term infrastructure investments.

The agency’s very structure, a relic of a less polarized time, now appears to be a primary obstacle to creating durable, effective national policy.

The Industry Influence Problem

A long-standing criticism of the FCC, and of regulatory agencies in general, is its vulnerability to “regulatory capture.” This is the theory that an agency created to serve the public interest can, over time, become dominated by the very industries it is charged with regulating.

Capture can occur because regulated industries have a massive financial stake in the outcomes of rulemakings and thus have a powerful incentive to invest heavily in lobbying and influence, whereas the interest of the general public is more diffuse.

The Revolving Door

A key mechanism through which capture is thought to occur is the “revolving door”—the frequent movement of personnel between government jobs at the FCC and high-paying positions in the private sector at the telecommunications companies, law firms, and lobbying shops that interact with the agency.

Critics argue that this dynamic can lead regulators to curry favor with potential future employers by adopting industry-friendly policies while still in government.

While empirical studies on the revolving door at the FCC have yielded mixed results—with some finding it leads to more favorable industry outcomes and others finding little effect on commissioners’ voting behavior—the perception of undue influence persists.

Cognitive Capture

The debate is more complex than simple quid pro quo corruption. A more subtle but perhaps more pervasive issue is “cognitive capture.” Because the pool of technical and legal experts qualified to serve as FCC commissioners or senior staff is often drawn from the regulated industry itself, regulators may naturally come to adopt an industry-centric worldview.

Over time, the agency’s interpretation of the “public interest” can begin to align closely with the industry’s definition of a healthy market, prioritizing market efficiency over other goals like robust consumer protection or promoting competition.

This ideological shift, which some scholars trace back to the deregulatory push of the 1980s, represents a more insidious and harder-to-solve challenge than outright corruption.

Learning from Other Countries

The struggles of the FCC are not unique, but the approaches taken by other major Western economies offer a stark contrast and highlight potential paths for reform. International counterparts demonstrate that the alternative to the FCC’s current state is not a regulatory vacuum, but rather purpose-built, modern legislation designed specifically for the digital age.

The European Union: Comprehensive Reform

The EU has taken a comprehensive, harmonized approach. In 2018, it adopted the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC), a single, modern regulatory framework that applies across all 27 member states.

The EECC is explicitly designed to stimulate investment in high-capacity networks like 5G, strengthen consumer rights in both traditional and web-based services, and ensure universal access to affordable broadband. It represents a coordinated, forward-looking effort to create a single digital market with predictable rules.

Think tanks and academics in Europe continue to debate further reforms, such as moving away from market power analysis to targeting specific “bottlenecks” and adopting longer-term spectrum licenses to encourage investment.

The United Kingdom: Bold New Powers

The UK has taken a bold, and controversial, step into direct content regulation with its Online Safety Act of 2023. The Act empowers the UK’s regulator, Ofcom, to enforce a new “duty of care” on social media platforms and search engines.

This requires companies to proactively identify, mitigate, and remove illegal content (such as child sexual abuse material and terrorist content) and to protect children from legal but harmful content (such as material promoting self-harm or eating disorders).

The law is backed by severe penalties, including fines of up to £18 million or 10% of a company’s global annual revenue, whichever is higher.

This approach is a significant departure from the U.S. model, which has traditionally avoided content regulation under the protections of the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

The Common Thread: Modern Laws for Modern Problems

While the policy goals of the EU and the UK differ, they share a common recognition: that 20th-century telecommunications laws are insufficient for the 21st-century internet. They have undertaken the difficult political work of crafting new, bespoke legislative solutions.

This frames the debate in the United States not as a question of regulatory possibility, but as one of political will to move beyond a framework that is nearly a century old.

The Path Forward

The FCC stands at a crossroads. Its 90-year journey from a Depression-era regulator of radio and telephone monopolies to the overseer of the entire digital communications ecosystem demonstrates both remarkable adaptability and the growing strain of trying to apply analog-era laws to digital-age realities.

The agency’s successes in areas like combating robocalls and modernizing emergency services show that when its authority is clear and its mission enjoys broad support, it can be highly effective. Its struggles with net neutrality, rural broadband oversight, and the constant cycle of partisan policy reversals reveal the limits of trying to stretch a 1934 legal framework to cover technologies and business models that simply didn’t exist when the Communications Act was written.

The emergence of new challenges—from satellite internet constellations and AI-generated content to cybersecurity threats and the need for coordinated spectrum management—only underscores the agency’s continued relevance. The question is not whether America needs a communications regulator, but whether the current FCC is built to handle the demands of the modern digital economy.

However, agency budgets and staffing have historically lagged behind technical demands, full funding of FCC mandates are subject to political whims, and there’s always the friction of legacy systems in agency modernization. Plus, there are overlapping jurisdictions to consider. The FCC shares duties and territory with FTC, DOJ, NTIA, and state regulators, all of which must be navigated to move the agency’s agenda forward.

As digital communications infrastructure becomes more complex and interconnected, the FCC faces growing pressure to incorporate security and resilience into its regulatory framework. This includes not only ensuring that networks can withstand outages and cyberattacks, but also establishing rules for supply chain vetting to mitigate risks from untrusted foreign equipment. In practice, the FCC has already moved to restrict certain vendors from U.S. networks and is working more closely with agencies such as CISA and DHS to align standards on cybersecurity, emergency preparedness, and infrastructure resilience. Going forward, integrating these mandates will be essential for safeguarding the reliability and security of the nation’s communications systems.

The experiences of other major economies, from the EU’s comprehensive legislative overhaul to the UK’s bold expansion into content regulation, demonstrate that updating communications law for the digital age is not only possible but necessary. The choice facing American policymakers is whether to continue patching a 90-year-old system or to undertake the difficult work of building a regulatory framework designed for the realities of the 21st century.

In an economy where digital communications infrastructure underpins everything from remote work and online education to national security and emergency services, getting the regulatory framework right is not just a matter of policy efficiency—it’s a matter of national competitiveness and public safety.

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