After receiving industry comments on its Notice of Inquiry (Notice) last September in Docket 25-253, the FCC is poised to adopt a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in which it will create rules to prevent state and local statutes, regulations, and legal requirements from effectively prohibiting the provision of wireline telecommunications services on a timely basis, in violation of Section 253 of the Telecommunications Act (Act).
Section 253 is designed to prevent state and local governments from creating barriers that prohibit any entity from providing telecommunications services. Industry comments in the Notice indicate that many states are creating such barriers.
The resulting record shows that, while some state and local governments act on authorization applications on a timely basis, others take months or even years to issue approvals, resulting in the cancellation, postponement, and scaling back of wireline deployments. The record also shows that some state and local governments are charging authorization fees that are unrelated to their costs of managing public rights-of-way, resulting in financial burdens that require some providers to walk away from planned deployments and undermine investment in other deployments. (FCC Fact Sheet, released June 4, 2026.)
To eliminate these barriers, in the Rulemaking, the Commission proposes adopting presumptions that would limit wireline authorization timelines and fees that state and local governments could impose, consistent with Section 253. Specifically, it seeks comments on the following:
Propose and seek comment on establishing a rebuttable presumption that state and local governments have effectively prohibited the provision of wireline telecommunications services if they fail to process applications for access and use of public rights-of-way within 120 days.
The 120-day time period starts when a provider submits a written application for an authorization, or, if a state or local government requires pre- application steps, when the provider takes the first mandatory procedural step.
State and local governments be permitted to rebut the presumption that an effective prohibition has occurred under Section 253(a) if they can demonstrate that they legitimately require more than 120 days to act on an authorization request.
Propose and seek comment on limiting the fees that state and local governments may charge for a wireline telecommunications authorization to a reasonable approximation of the government’s actual, direct costs of managing the rights-of-way with respect to that authorization and establish safe harbor fee levels that presumptively comport with that standard.
To be competitively neutral and nondiscriminatory as required by Section 253(c), any fee charged to one provider of wireline telecommunications services may not be materially higher than those charged to other providers of wireline telecommunications services for similar uses of the public rights- of-way.
Propose that any state and local government fees that exceed the new fee standard adopted be presumed to have a prohibitive effect that violates Section 253(a) and fail to constitute fair and reasonable compensation under Section 253(c). Under this approach, providers would be permitted to seek preemption of the fees through a petition to the Commission under Section 253(d), and state and local governments would be permitted to rebut the presumption by demonstrating that the fees recover the actual, direct, and objectively reasonable costs they incurred due to the provider’s access and use of the public right-of-way
Propose and seek comment on requiring that the value of in-kind compensation demanded by state and local governments count toward any safe harbor fee levels adopted by the Commission.
Propose and seek comment on prohibiting state and local governments from imposing additional requirements on wireline telecommunications infrastructure deployments on the grounds that the infrastructure may be used to provide other services.
Invite comments on the Commission’s authority to enact these proposals.
The agency is expected to adopt the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on June 25, 2026. Comments will be due 45 days after it appears in the Federal Register.