More Team Telecom Reviews Expected if FCC Changes Foreign Ownership Threshold
Proposed revisions to Section 214 international authorization rules seem likely to result in increased scrutiny of foreign ownership by Team Telecom, said Jonathan Gafni, a foreign investment lawyer at Linklaters, during a Wednesday American Bar Association event. Team Telecom refers…
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to the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the U.S. Telecommunications Services Sector. “We expect to see more Team Telecom reviews,” Gafni said. The FCC proposed the changes in an NPRM last year (see 2304200039) that was met with industry concern (see 2310030070). While the "threshold of foreign ownership for carrier licensees and a couple of other types of licensees has traditionally been 25%," the FCC is "considering lowering that threshold to be more in line with" Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. "thresholds for looking at foreign investors," he said. "But another thing is that the FCC has actually asked that parties give a one-time disclosure of all their foreign ownership -- that carrier licensees provide a one-time disclosure -- because they hadn't looked at them for years. And so they have no idea how somebody who received a license 10 years ago may or may not have foreign ownership today, and whether that should be a concern.” Gavni expects "to see more Team Telecom reviews as these disclosures" are filed with the FCC, he said. In cases where the foreign ownership exceeds the new threshold, the agency could then make "referrals to the Team Telecom agencies for these national security and law enforcement reviews,” he said.