Federal Communications Commission
independent U.S. government agency
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, Wi-Fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction over the areas of broadband access, fair competition, radio frequency use, media responsibility, public safety, and homeland security.
The FCC was established pursuant to the Communications Act of 1934 to replace the radio regulation functions of the previous Federal Radio Commission. The FCC took over wire communication regulation from the Interstate Commerce Commission. The FCC's mandated jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of the United States. The FCC also provides varied degrees of cooperation, oversight, and leadership for similar communications bodies in other countries in North America. The FCC is funded entirely by regulatory fees. It has an estimated fiscal-2022 budget of $388 million. It employed 1,433 federal personnel as of 2022.
Mission and agency objectives
As specified in Section 1 of the Communications Act of 1934 and amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (amendment to 47 U.S.C. §151), the mandate of the FCC is, "to make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges".
“Federal Communications Commission” enters the record as independent U.S. government agency. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Federal, Communications and Commission can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Federal Communications Commission” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Federal, Communications and Commission provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q128831. VIAF identifies the subject as 28147965635684080226. The Library of Congress control number is n80051251. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1934, 2022 and 1996.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Federal Communications Commission”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Federal Communications Commission primary sources, Federal Communications Commission archive and Federal research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Federal Communications Commission” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.