An FCC equipment authorisation currently lasts forever, and the Commission is asking whether it should expire after ten years

An FCC equipment authorisation does not expire. Once granted, it stands until the Commission revokes it, which is how the system has worked for decades.

The Commission is now asking whether that should end. In a Third Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking adopted on 22 July and filed at the Federal Register on Thursday morning, it seeks comment on giving authorisations a fixed term, and tentatively suggests ten years, along with renewal procedures and a way of handling equipment authorised by supplier declaration rather than by certification.

It is one of roughly twenty proposals in a document that runs to a single densely packed summary.

Forty units

The sharpest number in it is an importation threshold.

Covered equipment, meaning equipment on the Commission's Covered List, would come out of the general import conditions in section 2.1204(a) and into a narrow new subsection. Under it, covered equipment could be imported only with a valid unrestricted authorisation, for export, for exclusive use by the federal government, to develop products for federal government use, or in quantities of 40 units or fewer for testing, evaluation or product development.

The document states the current general threshold for unauthorised devices as 4,000 units. Anything above 40 would need written approval from the Chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology.

The same section would remove the exception that currently permits marketing unauthorised handsets capable of working only outside the United States.

Somebody in the country to sue

The Commission proposes amending section 2.909 so that every applicant for, or holder of, a certification has a United States based liable party, which is already required for equipment authorised by supplier declaration.

The order is set out. The manufacturer or assembler if there is one in the country. Failing that, the importer. Failing that, a retailer or other party that takes the role on by agreement. Where a device has been modified without authorisation, the modifier if it is based here, and otherwise the importer.

The reason given is unusually direct for a rulemaking. The existing requirement to name a United States agent for service of process has, the Commission writes, in multiple instances proven insufficient to ensure compliance.

A bill of materials, priced

Applicants for certification could be required to file a signed hardware bill of materials and software bill of materials. For each component: who produced it, where it was produced, and what percentage of the component's value is attributable to each location. Updates would be due within 30 days of any change.

The Commission puts preliminary figures on it. Under $5,000 per software program. Up to $10,000 per hardware device. It also asks whether to narrow the requirement to Covered List sectors, to higher risk equipment, or to particular component classes such as logic-bearing hardware, modular transmitters and semiconductors.

Separately, it estimates the annual cost of barring authorisation or download of software and firmware produced by a Covered List entity at under $50m.

Two lists in one column

Much of the rest follows from a change the Covered List went through recently. It used to name producers. It now also names categories of equipment by where they were made, which is a different kind of entry, and the Commission's part 2 rules were written for the first kind.

So it proposes splitting the rules in two, and directing the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau to redesign the Covered List website into two columns. Alongside that it would codify three definitions that until now have lived in public notices and answers to frequently asked questions: what counts as produced in a foreign country, tied to the domestic end product standard in the federal acquisition rules; what a critical drone component is, given as an enumerated list running from flight controllers to batteries to motors; and what a router is, defined as a consumer grade device primarily intended for residential use.

On the first of those it asks an open question with a wide range of answers: whether the test should instead track the Federal Trade Commission's Made in USA standard, or trade law rules of origin.

Comments are due 30 days after Friday's publication, replies 45.