WASHINGTON—In response to the Federal Communications Commission fiscal year 2026 regulatory fee allocations, the NAB said it generally supports the Commission’s proposed allocations and the agency’s use of population-based methodology for assessing broadcast television fees.
The NAB also applauded the agency’s ongoing work to refine the regulatory fee methodology to more accurately account for the work performed by employees in non-core bureaus and offices.
It requested, however, that “that the Commission consider reducing the fees assessed to earth stations to more accurately reflect the benefits provided by the FCC to these stations and raising the de minimis threshold to account for the increased cost of collecting regulatory fees.”
Finally, the NAB once again suggested that the FCC “continue to look for mechanisms that account for the significant benefits certain industries receive yet do not currently pay anything under the current fees framework.”
While the FCC has rejected attempts to expand the businesses and industries that are assessed regulatory fees to fund the agency, the NAB once again argued that the FCC “can improve the regulatory fee process by expanding its base of regulatory fee payors to include all entities that benefit directly from the Commission’s activities. The current regulatory fee process disproportionately burdens a limited group of legacy industries, despite that a larger set of entities benefit from the Commission’s work. It is neither fair nor sustainable for a small group of payors to retain the responsibility for funding the Commission’s broad and growing portfolio of activities.”
The NAB also said that it “disagrees with the Commission’s tentative conclusion in the Notice that there is no basis upon which to propose new fee categories. Over the last few years, NAB and other stakeholders have submitted several comments explaining the basis for adding new fee categories and the Commission’s legal authority to expand the base of fee payors beyond licensees to other entities that benefit from the Commission’s activities” to potentially include “broadband service providers, equipment authorization holders, and major technology companies (“Big Tech”).”
“NAB submits that it is undeniable that such additional entities should share in the costs of funding the Commission’s activities,” the filing noted. “And while we concede that it may be challenging to determine an appropriate methodology for calculating regulatory fees for broadband service providers, equipment authorization holders, and Big Tech companies, that is no reason for the Commission to avoid its obligation to apportion regulatory fees in a fair manner.”
The full filing is available here.
