On 30 April 2026 the FCC adopted FCC 26-29, a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking titled "Protecting Against National Security Threats in Domestic Telecommunications Service," in WC Docket No. 26-82. The NPRM was released 1 May 2026 and published in the Federal Register on 8 May 2026 at 91 FR 25325. Comments are due on or before 8 June 2026 (thirty days after Federal Register publication); reply comments, and Paperwork Reduction Act comments, are due on or before 7 July 2026 (sixty days after publication). This is a proposed rule — the substantive obligations described below are what the Commission is asking about, not what it has adopted.
The proceeding sits in the same regulatory stack as the FCC's Submarine Cable Report and Order (90 FR 48648, October 2025), the Foreign Adversary Control Report and Order (FCC 26-2, January 2026), and the Equipment Authorization Integrity Second Report and Order (FCC 26-30, April 2026). Where each of those earlier actions reached a specific corner of the national-security framework — landing licenses, foreign-adversary control attestations, and certification body integrity respectively — FCC 26-29 reaches the underlying domestic section 214 authorization that makes a telecommunications carrier a telecommunications carrier in the first place.
What is the Commission actually proposing on § 63.01?
The operative amendment is to 47 CFR § 63.01(a), which since 1999 has granted blanket domestic interstate section 214 authority to "any party that would be a domestic interstate communications common carrier." The proposed revision keeps that blanket authority in place for the universe of ordinary carriers and adds one sentence: "This authorization does not apply to any entities identified on the Covered List (named entities and their affiliates and subsidiaries, as well as entities included by reference therein) published pursuant to § 1.50002 of this chapter."
The Covered List is the supply-chain blacklist established under the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, codified at 47 U.S.C. §§ 1601-1609. It is published and maintained by the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and currently identifies Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision, Dahua, Kaspersky, China Mobile International USA, China Telecom (Americas), China Unicom (Americas), Pacific Networks, and ComNet (USA). The Commission would treat the published list as the operative scope of the exclusion, with current and future affiliates and subsidiaries swept in automatically. The exclusion would also apply if a Covered List entity is a proposed transferee or assignee of an existing section 214 authorization, closing the obvious acquisition workaround.
An entity excluded from blanket authority could still apply individually for domestic section 214 authority. The Commission asks whether the application requirements should track § 63.18, the rule governing applications for international section 214 authority, and whether such applications should be referred to the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector — Team Telecom — for national-security review. It also asks whether to adopt a presumptive disqualifying condition analogous to the one adopted in the Submarine Cable R&O and codified at § 1.70004(a) and (b), under which an applicant can overcome the adverse presumption only by clear and convincing evidence that the applicant does not fall within the scope of the presumption, that grant would not pose national-security risks, or that the national-security benefits of grant would substantially outweigh the risks.
The Commission also asks whether the exclusion should reach further than the Covered List itself — for example, to entities "owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary" as defined in § 1.70001(g), or to entities that install Covered List equipment in their networks after a cutoff date. These are framed as open questions rather than tentative conclusions.
What would change for Covered List entities currently providing domestic service?
Several Covered List entities are currently providing domestic interstate telecommunications services on the strength of the existing blanket § 63.01 authority — most notably the U.S. affiliates of China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom, whose international section 214 authorizations were revoked between 2019 and 2022 but whose domestic operations persisted. The NPRM asks how to wind those operations down if the proposed exclusion is adopted.
Two procedural paths are on the table. The first borrows the streamlined revocation framework adopted in the Foreign Adversary Control R&O for cases involving "Covered Authorizations" deemed to pose national-security risks — the Commission's stated rationale is administrative consistency and ease of administrability. The second is a date-certain deemed revocation: the Commission specifically asks whether to declare existing blanket operating authority for Covered List entities revoked as of six months after the effective date of the new rule. The NPRM also asks whether entities added to the Covered List in the future should receive a comparable six-month transition window, and what notice, number-porting assistance, and other customer-transition obligations should attach to either path.
What does the NPRM ask about interconnection?
The Commission reaches a tentative conclusion — that interconnecting with an entity that does not hold domestic section 214 authority for national-security reasons is an unreasonable practice under section 201(b) of the Communications Act — and then asks whether to write a corresponding prohibition into its rules. The questions are concrete: whether to prohibit interconnection with excluded Covered List entities, with entities that have had blanket operating authority revoked, with facilities (including data centers and Points of Presence) owned or operated by Covered List entities, and with carriers that installed Covered List equipment in their networks after a cutoff date.
The legal architecture asks whether section 251(a)'s general duty to "interconnect directly or indirectly with the facilities and equipment of other telecommunications carriers" presents an obstacle. The Commission's tentative reading is that an entity excluded from or stripped of section 214 authority is not a "telecommunications carrier" for § 251(a) purposes, so the duty does not attach. The savings clause at section 251(i), which preserves Commission authority under section 201, is offered as an alternative legal hook. Targeted forbearance from § 251(a)(1) is mentioned as a backup. The Robocall Mitigation Database analogy — under which removal from the database triggers downstream obligations on intermediate and terminating providers to refuse traffic — is cited as a precedent for cascading interconnection obligations.
Operational questions follow: whether existing interconnection agreements already permit termination when one party loses Commission authority, what renegotiation costs would be, whether network changes would be required and at what cost, whether a transition period is necessary, and whether the Commission should be able to grant PoP-specific waivers (with the Wireline Competition Bureau potentially delegated that authority).
How does the Part 15 / unlicensed wireless question fit in?
This is the question with the most direct line to equipment-side compliance audiences. The Commission observes that Part 15 of the rules allows devices using radio-frequency signals to operate without individual licenses, subject to technical limits on emissions and harmful interference. A Covered List entity could, in principle, sidestep a § 63.01 exclusion by offering fixed wireless broadband internet access service — or any other service that does not require advance Commission review — using equipment that has been authorized under Part 15. The NPRM asks whether to modify the unlicensed wireless rules to close that pathway.
The specific questions are whether to revise the Part 15 framework to exclude Covered List entities, by default, from being able to offer service to the public or to third parties using Part 15-compliant equipment; what the appropriate scope of such a restriction would be (limited to specific service categories such as fixed wireless internet access to business customers, or broader); and how to incorporate use-based eligibility restrictions into a rule framework that has historically been device-centered rather than operator-centered. The Commission seeks comment on its authority under §§ 301, 302, and 303 of the Communications Act to draw the line that way, and asks whether the contemplated regulation is an action "to maintain the control of the United States over all the channels of radio transmission" under section 301.
Equipment authorization itself is not amended by this NPRM. A Part 15-restricted operator framework, if adopted, would sit on top of the existing device-certification rules under 47 CFR Part 2 rather than replacing them. The compliance demonstration at the FCC ID stage would not change. What would change is who is permitted to operate the equipment commercially.
What is the relationship to the broader national-security regulatory stack?
FCC 26-29 is the fourth significant national-security action the Commission has taken in the 2025-2026 cycle. The Submarine Cable Report and Order at 90 FR 48648 (released October 2025) wrote the presumptive disqualifying condition into the landing-license framework. The Foreign Adversary Control Report and Order at FCC 26-2 (January 2026) established the foreign-adversary control attestation requirement and the streamlined revocation procedure for Covered Authorizations. The Equipment Authorization Integrity Second Report and Order at FCC 26-30 (April 2026, ET Docket No. 24-136) restructured the test-laboratory and certification-body framework on national-security grounds. FCC 26-29 reaches the underlying carrier-authorization layer that the earlier actions all sit on top of.
The cumulative effect, if all proposals across the stack are adopted as proposed, is that a Covered List entity would be excluded from blanket domestic section 214 authority, prohibited from interconnecting with U.S. carriers, prohibited from operating PoPs and data centers in the United States in the interconnection-prohibition scenario, restricted in its ability to offer service through Part 15 unlicensed wireless equipment, ineligible to hold Covered Authorizations or transact with Covered Authorization holders, and unable to certify equipment through certification bodies whose national-security posture has been compromised. Each of those individual rules is conditional on the outcome of the corresponding proceeding; FCC 26-29 contributes the carrier-authorization piece.
What should commenters file by 8 June 2026?
- Direct response to the § 63.01 amendment. The Commission asks specifically whether additional findings are necessary to conclude that blanket authorization for Covered List entities would not serve the public convenience and necessity, and whether the exclusion should reach only entities whose services are on the Covered List (versus entities whose equipment is on the list). A comment that addresses those questions head-on, with technical or operational evidence about service-versus-equipment distinctions, is the most direct response to what the Commission asked.
- Position on revocation procedure. Streamlined-revocation-framework versus six-month-deemed-revocation is a procedural choice with very different operational consequences for customers and intermediate providers. Commenters with specific data on number-porting timelines, customer-transition costs, or notice-period feasibility should put that data into the record.
- Interconnection scope. The Commission is asking what to prohibit, not whether to prohibit anything: data centers and PoPs, carriers that installed Covered List equipment, the § 1.70001(g) foreign-adversary class, the § 251(a) / § 251(i) / forbearance legal architecture. A comment that addresses any of those is responsive; comments that bring data on existing interconnection-agreement termination clauses, renegotiation costs, or estimated transition periods will be unusually useful to the record.
- Part 15 framework. This is the broadest question and the one with the most equipment-side implications. The Commission asks how use-based eligibility restrictions could be incorporated into the existing device-centered framework, and what the scope should be (specific service categories versus general). Comments from equipment manufacturers, certification stakeholders, and unlicensed-band operators that address feasibility, scope, and enforcement mechanisms would address an underdeveloped part of the record.
- PRA-specific comments. The Paperwork Reduction Act comments are due on the same 7 July date as reply comments and address only the proposed information-collection requirements — submit by email to PRA@fcc.gov and to Nicole Ongele rather than to the docket.
- Filing mechanics. All comments go in WC Docket No. 26-82 via ECFS at https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs. The proceeding is a permit-but-disclose proceeding, so ex parte presentations must be filed within two business days. Comments and reply comments must be filed by the deadlines on the first page of the Notice; IRFA-responsive comments must carry a separate, distinct heading designating them as such.
What does CTS take from this for client work?
Directly, very little. FCC 26-29 is a telecommunications-carrier authorization rule, not an equipment-authorization rule, and CTS's client base is predominantly equipment manufacturers seeking FCC ID and overlapping international approvals. None of the proposals here change the device-certification path under 47 CFR Part 2 or the equipment side of the equipment authorization integrity framework.
Indirectly, the Part 15 question is worth tracking. If the Commission adopts operator-eligibility restrictions in the unlicensed wireless rules, the FCC ID process for Part 15-authorized devices would remain unchanged, but the population of permissible operators of those devices would shift. That has consequences for go-to-market planning by equipment manufacturers whose downstream customers include fixed-wireless ISPs or other Part 15-dependent service providers — particularly any whose ownership profile triggers the § 1.70001(g) foreign-adversary attestation requirement. The downstream procurement implications of an interconnection prohibition on data centers and PoPs owned by Covered List entities are also worth tracking for clients with co-location or peering arrangements at affected facilities.
The procedural status matters: this is an NPRM, not a final rule, and the questions are open. Comments filed by 8 June 2026 and reply comments by 7 July 2026 will shape what, if anything, is adopted. The companion item from the April 2026 open meeting — the Equipment Authorization Integrity Second R&O at FCC 26-30 — is the one with direct device-certification consequences and is the subject of a separate brief in this catalog.