100 Days of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr

WASHINGTON, April 29, 2025 – At a press conference Monday, Brendan Carr said his first 100 days as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission delivered "everything and more" from his promised agenda.

In that time, Carr has launched an aggressive deregulatory push; pushed to restore the FCC’s spectrum auction authority in Congress’s reconciliation bill; implemented measures to protect consumers, including cracking down on illegal robocalls and proposing rules to prevent excessively loud commercials; and ended the FCC’s promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

“We’ve been moving very, very quickly,” Carr told reporters, touting initiatives to cut outdated rules.

“We've been looking to eliminate needless regulations, including launching probably the largest deregulatory initiative at the FCC in our ‘Delete, Delete, Delete’ proceeding,” Carr said. 

“We have set up our own sort of internal DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) effort, and we have pulled every single contract that the FCC has,” Carr said. He pointed to a now-terminated ‘hog trapping’ contract worth approx. $60,000 a year to keep the animals off FCC properties, as an example.

“We have already reduced hundreds of millions of dollars of the sort of long term spend that would have occurred under contracts that we don't think we need anymore,” he said. 

In a separate release Tuesday, the FCC detailed saving at least $463 million by terminating legacy agency contracts.

The release also pointed to additional achievements, including: having processed nearly 85 space station and 904 earth station applications since January 20; launching the agency’s first spectrum auction proposal in five years for the AWS-3 band; and rescinding a Biden-era proposal that would have required stricter environmental reviews for cell tower projects.

Carr also advanced copper retirement policies – allowing AT&T to shut down a quarter of its legacy wireless switching centers – and removed a Biden-era proposal to restrict bulk billing for broadband in apartment buildings.

In line with Trump administration concerns about the scope of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs in the private sector, Carr has opened investigations into Verizon, Comcast, ABC, Disney, and others, over their diversity policies, and even tied future merger approvals to the rollback of DEI programs. 

National security has remained central as well: Carr opened an inquiry into GPS backup systems, continued investigations into Chinese telecom providers, and stood up a new FCC Council on National Security. 

Looking ahead, Carr said that copper retirement, spectrum restoration, and deeper regulatory rollbacks will drive the agency's next phase.

“We're going to continue to expand on making sure that providers can invest in new high-speed networks,” Carr said at the press conference. “Copper retirement is a piece of that… I'd like to continue to create certainty so people don't have to invest limited capital in two different networks – an old copper one and a new one.”

On spectrum, Carr said talks across government were ongoing as Congress works toward reconciliation, and expressed optimism that the FCC’s auction authority will be restored. “I'm hopeful that's a place where we'll get our auction authority restored, and then we'll be further off to the races on that,” he said.

Carr also highlighted the agency’s sweeping deregulatory review, noting that every FCC bureau and office completed an initial audit of existing rules, identifying which could be modified or eliminated. 

“I think that's going to bear a lot of fruit as well,” Carr said. “You’ve seen the themes from the first 100 days, and I think we're just going to expand action even further.”