By Nadia Dreid

The US Department of State is changing the way it reviews submarine cable license applications when they’ve been referred to both the agency and a recently created US Department of Justice committee aimed at helping the Federal Communications Commission review foreign participation in the telecom industry.

The FCC broke the news Tuesday in a public notice, saying it had received word that when it refers such an application to both the State Department and the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the US Telecommunications Services Sector, the State Department will wait to do its part until the committee has made its decision.

Created via executive order by then-President Donald Trump in 2020, the committee is supposed to “normalize and improve the executive branch’s process for advising the FCC.” Before then and for roughly the last 20 years, the executive branch worked with the FCC through a more informal process known as Team Telecom, where an ad hoc group of federal agencies helped the commission assess foreign security risk.

Since 2001, the State Department has had the task of approving the FCC’s decision to grant or revoke submarine cable landing licenses, which has “generally occurred at the same time the application was placed on the Commission’s accepted for filing public notice,” the FCC said Tuesday.

Once it does start its review, the FCC said, the State Department intends to come back with an answer within 10 days or inform the commission that it will need more time.

Submarine cables are fiber optic cables laid on the ocean floor to carry telecommunications signals across oceans, and submarine cable landing stations are the points at which such cables reach land. As of 2019, the FCC had licensed more than 70 systems across the country, according to intelligence consultant Submarine Cable Networks.

The most recent high-profile action by the Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the US Telecommunications Services Sector was its recommendation in December 2021 that Google and Meta Platforms Inc. be permitted to operate the Pacific Light Cable Network system between the United States, Taiwan and the Philippines. The committee insisted, however, that the cable bypass Hong Kong to ensure data traveling over the cable system remains out of the hands of China-linked adversaries.

• Editing by Kristen Becker.