Every few years, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) tells Congress and the public what it intends to do with its authority. The agency's strategic plan is not a rulemaking and creates no legal obligations, but it is the framework around which the FCC builds its annual performance plan and budget request to Congress. The strategic plan also serves as the yardstick against which the agency's own annual performance reports—and outside overseers like the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)—measure whether the FCC did what it said it would do.

The FCC's Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2026–2030, issued July 6, 2026, deserves a close read alongside the plan it replaces—the Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2022–2026, which has been pulled down from the FCC's website. Read side by side, the two documents describe two very different agencies. The 2022 plan, created when Jessica Rosenworcel served as FCC Chairwoman, organized the FCC around bringing "affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to 100 percent of the country," with universal service, equity, and consumer protection as pillars. The 2026 plan organizes the FCC around Chairman Brendan Carr's "Build America Agenda," with spectrum auctions, deregulation, and national security as pillars—and with affordability, low-income Americans, and digital equity almost entirely absent from the text.

For state broadband officials administering federally funded deployment programs, the new plan signals how the FCC intends to use its maps, its coordination role, and its permitting authority over the next five years. For digital equity practitioners, the plan confirms that the FCC no longer organizes itself around affordability and retains an adoption metric without any strategy behind it. For researchers and policymakers, the plan's performance metrics—far more specific and quantified than in the prior plan—will define what "success" means in the agency's own annual reporting through 2030. And for anyone tracking the constitutional status of independent agencies, the new plan contains a quiet but significant change in how the FCC describes itself.

Two Plans, Four Fewer Words: "Independent," "Equity," "Affordable," "Low-Income"

First, the basics.

The 2022–2026 plan established six strategic goals; the 2026–2030 plan consolidates to four:

FY 2022–2026 (Rosenworcel)                                                                               FY 2026–2030 (Carr) 
1. Pursue a "100 Percent" Broadband Policy                                                         1. Accelerate High-Speed Internet Builds 
2. Promote Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility                                        2. Promote National Security and Public Safety 
3. Empower Consumers                                                                                         3. Protect Consumers and Promote Free Speech 
4. Enhance Public Safety and National Security                                                    4. Enhance Efficiency and Accountability, and Reduce Waste
5. Advance America's Global Competitiveness 
6. Foster Operational Excellence 

The mapping of these goals is not one-to-one. The 2022 plan's global competitiveness goal (Goal 5) has been folded into the new plan's broadband and national security goals, and the operational excellence goal (Goal 6) becomes the new efficiency-and-waste goal (Goal 4). The 2022 plan's diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility goal (Goal 2) has no successor (more on that below).

In his opening message, Chairman Carr frames all four 2026-2030 goals as supporting the "Build America Agenda": "unleashing high-speed infrastructure builds, restoring America's leadership in wireless, boosting the U.S. space economy, advancing national security and public safety, protecting consumers and free speech, and being good stewards of taxpayer dollars." Chairman Carr first announced the Build America Agenda in a July 2, 2025, speech in Sioux Falls, South Dakota—the first major policy address of his chairmanship.

Broadband: From Universal Service to Speed, Simplification, and Spectrum

What the 2022-2026 plan said.

The Rosenworcel-era plan made broadband its first goal and defined the problem in terms of people left out: "serious broadband gaps that exist across the country, including in rural infrastructure, affordability for low-income Americans, and at-home access for students." That plan's first objective committed the agency to "pursue policies to help bring affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to 100 percent of the population, including rural areas, and Tribal lands as well as for low-income Americans and students."  The second objective put the Universal Service Fund (USF)—the roughly $8–9 billion annual system that supports the E-Rate (schools and libraries), Lifeline (low-income), Rural Health Care, and High-Cost programs—at the center: modernizing USF "to better facilitate affordable broadband deployment and meaningful access to essential services for all Americans." The plan even committed the FCC to "a national consumer awareness and education campaign focusing on broadband adoption with specific emphasis on people of color and others who have been historically underserved." 

What the 2026 plan says.

The Carr-era plan also makes broadband its first goal—but redefines both the problem and the tools. The problem is now framed as regulatory drag and spectrum scarcity: "The FCC must promote a pro-growth agenda to unleash the U.S. economy... The FCC must also cut red tape to help ensure that providers roll out upgraded, high-speed networks to more Americans on a faster timeline." The chairman's message distills the approach to three words: "speed, simplification, and spectrum."

Goal 1's four objectives are:

Objective 1.1 commits the FCC to expanding commercial access to mid-band spectrum (the frequencies prized for 5G because they balance coverage and capacity), noting the agency has held over 100 auctions since 1993, raising more than $233 billion. The objective's performance metrics are unusually specific and unusually dated: complete competitive bidding for at least 100 megahertz of the 3.98–4.2 GHz band (the "Upper C-band") for mobile broadband, by July 4, 2027, and complete bidding on "not less than 200 MHz identified by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, "by July 4, 2029." Those dates are not arbitrary: the 2025 budget reconciliation law (the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) restored the FCC's lapsed auction authority and directed the agency to complete bidding for at least 100 MHz of the Upper C-band 'not later than 2 years after' enactment—and because the law was signed on July 4, 2025, the deadline falls on July 4, 2027 (OBBB Act § 40002(b)(2), as quoted in the FCC's Upper C-band Report and Order). 

Objective 1.2, "Reduce Barriers to Broadband Deployment," is where the 2022 plan's universal service agenda now lives. Its strategies commit the FCC to fast-track broadband infrastructure deployment in coordination with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments (Strategy 1); to refine and update the National Broadband Map (Strategy 2); to track federal broadband infrastructure funding commitments "to avoid duplicative Federal spending, promote greater coordination among agencies and stakeholders, and increase transparency and accountability" (Strategy 3); and—in the plan's single most consequential sentence for universal service advocates—to "Modernize Universal Service Fund (USF) programs to reflect market demands and advancement in network technologies, consistent with the intent of Congress" (Strategy 4).

Objective 1.3 commits the agency to spectrum for space, mobile broadband, and unlicensed growth, including direct-to-cell satellite service, expedited satellite application processing, and facilitating "very low power devices and other unlicensed applications in the 6 GHz band" to boost Wi-Fi and the Internet of Things. One of its performance metrics counts "% decrease in broadband serviceable locations (homes and businesses where fixed broadband is or could be installed) lacking satellite broadband at speeds of at least 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) down / 20 Mbps up"—meaning satellite coverage now counts, in the FCC's own scorekeeping, toward closing broadband availability gaps.

Objective 1.4 addresses the copper-to-fiber transition: "Streamline the process for retiring copper networks and discontinuing legacy services," with metrics that measure how fast the agency processes carriers' discontinuance applications—establishing a goal of 100% of streamlined discontinuance applications processed within 90 days. The 2022 plan contained no comparable commitment. Copper retirement is a new strategic priority, with direct consequences for consumers who still depend on legacy voice and DSL services.

What survived.

Some threads of continuity deserve note. The 2026 plan's deployment metrics adopt a 100/20 Mbps threshold for "high-speed connectivity" and measure the percentage of broadband serviceable locations served by at least one—and, separately, by two or more—fixed terrestrial providers at that speed. Measuring competition, not just availability, is a meaningful commitment. The plan also retains "% increase in broadband adoption" as a performance metric. And Carr's opening message keeps the familiar formulation of the goal itself: "to bring affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet to all Americans."

What is conspicuously absent.

But that sentence in the Chairman's message is the only appearance of the word "affordable" in the entire document. By comparison, forms of "affordable/affordability" appear eight times in the 2022 plan. "Low-income" appears three times in the 2022 plan and not at all in the 2026 plan. "Students" appears four times in 2022 and zero times in 2026. "Tribal" falls from eight mentions to two—both in intergovernmental-coordination boilerplate (Objective 1.2 Strategy 1, and Objective 2.2). Tribal lands are no longer named as a broadband target population as they were in 2022's Strategic Objective 1.1. "Digital divide" appears once in the 2026 plan, and the mechanism for crossing it is spectrum policy: "Getting spectrum policies right translates directly into bringing Americans across the digital divide" (Goal 1 introduction).¹

The adoption metric illustrates the pattern. The plan commits to measuring the "% increase in broadband adoption" (Objective 1.2)—but unlike the 2022 plan, which paired adoption goals with affordability programs and a national outreach campaign, the 2026 plan contains no strategy to increase adoption. While the adoption metric remains, the policy apparatus behind it is not mentioned.

Neither plan names the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)—the $30-per-month broadband benefit that, at its peak, enrolled roughly 23 million households before ending due to a lack of additional funding by Congress in 2024. But the two plans were written on opposite sides of the program's cessation. The 2022 plan's affordability commitments were made while ACP's predecessor, the Emergency Broadband Benefit, was in effect; the 2026 plan's silence on affordability comes after the largest broadband affordability program in U.S. history lapsed and was not replaced.

Carefully chosen language: "consistent with the intent of Congress."

The USF modernization strategy carries a qualifier that appears nowhere in the 2022 plan's USF commitments: modernization will be "consistent with the intent of Congress." The phrase lands in a specific legal and political context. In June 2025, the Supreme Court in FCC v. Consumers' Research upheld the constitutionality of the USF's funding mechanism in a 6–3 decision, overturning a Fifth Circuit ruling that Congress had unconstitutionally delegated its taxing power to the FCC, and a congressional working group has signaled interest in USF reform legislation. Whether "consistent with the intent of Congress" signals deference to a coming legislative rewrite, a narrower reading of the FCC's existing Section 254 authority (the Communications Act provision governing universal service), or both, the plan does not say. What is clear from the text is that the USF has moved from an organizing objective of the FCC's broadband agenda to a single strategy under a deregulatory deployment objective—and its other principal appearance in the new plan is under Goal 4, where the agency commits to reducing "fraud, waste, and abuse" across its programs.

Reversion or Rupture? Testing the New Plan Against the Pai-Era Baseline

Because the two plans compared above span a partisan transition, any difference between them could be dismissed as an ordinary alternation between administrations. The FCC's FY 2018–2022 Strategic Plan, issued under Republican Chairman Ajit Pai, offers a control example, and it sorts the changes into two distinct piles.

Some of the 2026 plan's omissions signal reversions to the Pai-era pattern. The words "low-income," "students," "equity," and "Lifeline" appear zero times in the 2018–2022 plan, just as in the 2026–2030 plan; naming those populations and programs was a Rosenworcel-era addition. The 2026 plan's deregulatory orientation is likewise continuous with its Republican predecessor: the Pai plan promised "light-touch regulation," committed to "eliminating those regulations that fail to solve real problems at a reasonable cost," and made process reform a full strategic goal (2018–2022 plan, Strategic Goal 4 and Performance Goal 4.2.1). The Carr plan's deregulatory framing might be seen as a continuation of that tradition, not an invention.

But other changes have no precedent in either predecessor. The Pai plan's first strategic goal was "Closing the Digital Divide," and it used the phrase eight times; the Carr plan uses it once. The Pai plan used "affordable" (or "unaffordable") five times—its Goal 1 vision committed the agency to "facilitate deployment and access to affordable broadband in all areas of the country," and its USF objective aimed "to facilitate affordable broadband deployment" (2018–2022 plan, Strategic Goal 1 Vision; Strategic Objective 1.2); the Carr plan uses "affordable" once, in the chairman's message. The Pai plan named Tribal lands and Tribal Nations as broadband targets eight times, including in its first strategic objective (Strategic Objective 1.1); the Carr plan's two mentions of "Tribal" are intergovernmental-coordination boilerplate. And the Pai plan carried an explicit nondiscrimination deployment commitment: "Ensure that broadband networks are built and available to all American consumers, regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, geography or other factors" (Performance Goal 1.1.2)—a commitment with no counterpart in the 2026–2030 plan.

In short, a Republican FCC talking less about low-income programs is a reversion. A Republican FCC that stops saying "affordable," "digital divide," "Tribal lands," and "regardless of race" is new.

The Disappearance of Equity

The 2022 plan's Strategic Goal 2 committed the FCC to "eliminate historical, systemic, and structural barriers that perpetuate disadvantaged or underserved individuals and communities" and to examine how the agency's own rules "may promote or inhibit advances in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility" (2022–2026 plan, Strategic Goal 2 and Objectives 2.1–2.2). The 2022 plan also carried workforce diversity commitments in its operational goal (Performance Goals 6.2.6 and 6.2.7).

None of this appears in the 2026–2030 plan. The words "equity," "equitable," "inclusion," and "discrimination" each appear zero times. The 2022 plan's equity goal was itself new—the 2018–2022 plan had no counterpart—so its removal is partly a reversion to the prior baseline. But it is also affirmative, stated policy rather than quiet omission. Chairman Carr's own year-end summary of 2025 says the agency ended the FCC's promotion of DEI by eliminating its DEI advisory group and task force, rescinding its equity action plan, and striking DEI from FCC strategic priorities as well as its annual budget and performance plans. The strategic plan is where that removal becomes the agency's official five-year posture.

Accessibility, survives the consolidation, but is stripped of the surrounding equity framework. The new plan commits to "ensure the availability of quality, functionally equivalent communications services to persons with disabilities" (Goal 3 introduction), to promote accessibility of mass media and emergency services (Objective 3.2, Strategy 2), and to measure the "% reduction in accessibility-related complaints" (Objective 3.2, Performance Metrics). The plan also adds commitments the 2022 plan lacked: improving access to the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline's text services, with georouting metrics dated to 2027 and 2028 (Objective 3.2), and supporting "domestic violence survivors' access to safe communications" (Objective 3.3, Strategy 4). One 2022 commitment with no counterpart is protecting "incarcerated individuals and their families to ensure access to affordable communications services" (2022 Performance Goal 3.1.5).

Carefully Chosen Language: The Word "Independent"

The 2022 plan describes the FCC twice in terms of independence: "The FCC is an independent regulatory agency of the United States Government" and "As an independent rulemaking agency, the FCC regularly solicits comments..."

The 2026 plan drops the word both times. The agency is now "the federal agency responsible for implementing and enforcing America's communications laws" (Mission), and the stakeholder section opens: "As a regulatory rulemaking agency..." (Stakeholder Engagement). In the entire document, "independent" describes only the FCC's financial auditors, its Office of Inspector General (OIG), and the GAO—never the Commission itself. This is not a partisan convention: former Chairman Pai’s FY 2018-2022 plan used the identical formulations, calling the FCC "an independent regulatory agency of the United States Government" and "an independent rulemaking agency" (2018–2022 plan, About the Federal Communications Commission; Stakeholder Engagement). The word's disappearance breaks with both predecessors, Democratic and Republican alike.

The plan is, if anything, explicit about the reason. The chairman's message states that "consistent with Trump Administration directives, the FCC will Enhance Efficiency and Accountability, and Reduce Waste" (Message from the Chairman), and Goal 4 commits the agency to manage its resources "consistent with Administration policies and the authorities provided by Congress." There is precedent for a Republican FCC aligning its strategic plan with executive-branch regulatory policy: the Pai plan committed to a reform agenda "guided by the principles of" Executive Order 13771 (the first Trump administration's regulatory cost-control order) and Executive Order 13579, and described those orders as "consistent with the values and philosophy we apply at the FCC" (2018–2022 plan, Performance Goal 4.2.1 and Strategies). However the character of the alignment has changed. The orders the Pai plan embraced were framed around principles the agency chose to adopt—EO 13579 is titled "Regulation and Independent Regulatory Agencies" and merely asked independent agencies to follow cost-benefit practices—whereas the Carr plan pledges consistency with "Administration directives." And no FCC strategic plan language operates in a vacuum. Executive Order 14215, "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies," issued February 18, 2025, requires independent agencies—including the FCC—to submit significant regulatory actions to the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) for review before publication, and directs their leadership to coordinate policies and priorities with the White House. By contrast, the 2022 plan's nod to executive-branch regulatory policy was a commitment to the cost-benefit principles of Executive Orders 12866 and 13563 (Performance Goal 6.1.2)—orders that, at the time, did not bind the FCC.

Two smaller wording changes point the 2026 plan in the same direction, and the 2018 plan confirms both are departures rather than partisan alternation. Both the 2018 and 2022 plans quoted the FCC's statutory mission from Section 1 of the Communications Act of 1934, including its command to serve "all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex" (2018–2022 plan, Mission; 2022–2026 plan, Mission, both quoting 47 U.S.C. § 151). The 2026 plan's Mission section paraphrases the agency's role and does not quote the statute; the nondiscrimination language does not appear. And where both prior plans said the FCC "is directed by five Commissioners," the 2026 plan says "up to five Commissioners"—an accurate description of a Commission that, per the organizational chart in the plan itself, currently seats three: Chairman Carr and Commissioners Anna M. Gomez and Olivia Trusty.

Beyond Broadband: National Security Up, Consumer Privacy Out, "Free Speech" In

National security is the plan's biggest growth area.

The 2022 plan treated national security as one strand of a public safety goal (Strategic Objective 4.3). The 2026 plan elevates it to co-headline status. The plan builds Goal 2 around the FCC's new Council on National Security, whose three-part charge is to reduce U.S. technology and telecommunications supply chain dependence on foreign adversaries, investigate and mitigate vulnerabilities to foreign espionage and surveillance, and "ensure the U.S. wins the strategic competition with China over critical technologies," including 5G/6G, artificial intelligence, satellites, quantum computing, robotics, and the Internet of Things. Performance metrics include denying or removing "bad labs" from the equipment testing process and reducing submarine cables with foreign-adversary ownership. They also commit the FCC to reducing the number of carriers with foreign-adversary owners that hold international Section 214 authorizations—FCC permission to carry telecommunications traffic between the U.S. and other countries (Objective 2.1, Performance Metrics). The plan also commits to developing alternatives to GPS (Global Positioning System) for positioning, navigation, and timing (Objective 2.2, Strategy 1) and—in a detail that dates the document—to supporting the White House Task Force on the 2028 Summer Olympics with sufficient spectrum (Objective 2.3, Strategy 4). The 911, Next Generation 911, and emergency alerting commitments largely carry forward from the 2022 plan (compare 2022 Objectives 4.1–4.2 with 2026 Objectives 2.2, 2.4, and 2.5).

Consumer protection narrows and reframes.

Both plans commit to fighting illegal robocalls, and here the 2026 plan is arguably more concrete, with metrics tied to the Robocall Mitigation Database, STIR/SHAKEN call authentication (a caller ID verification framework), and Do-Not-Originate lists (Objective 3.1).

But the 2022 plan's consumer goal explicitly included "telephone privacy issues" (Performance Goal 3.1.1); the word "privacy" appears nowhere in the 2026 plan, which addresses data protection only through a metric on reducing telecommunications data breaches (Objective 3.3, Performance Metrics).

In addition, the framing of media policy changes markedly. The 2022 plan sought "a regulatory landscape that fosters media competition, diversity, and localism" (Strategic Goal 3), while the 2026 plan commits to "Protect Consumers and Promote Free Speech... by empowering and preserving local broadcasting," to "level the playing field for traditional and non-traditional media content creators," and—in an open-ended strategy—to "Ensure broadcasters operate in public interest" (Goal 3 introduction; Objective 3.2, Strategy 1). The plan does not define what operating "in public interest" requires of broadcasters or how the FCC will assess it.

Efficiency becomes a strategic goal in itself.

Goal 4 codifies the "Delete, Delete, Delete" initiative—which the plan describes as "a massive, new deregulatory initiative" to "eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens and alleviate the impact of unnecessary and unlawful regulations" (Objective 4.1)—with performance metrics that include the "# of words, pages, and rules/requirements removed from the Code of Federal Regulations" and the number of FCC proceedings terminated as dormant (Objective 4.1, Performance Metrics). Measuring deregulation by the volume of text removed from the CFR appears in neither of the two prior plans; the 2018 and 2022 plans' analogue was a commitment to eliminate or avoid regulations that "fail to solve real problems at a reasonable cost" (2018–2022 plan, Performance Goal 4.2.1; 2022–2026 plan, Performance Goal 6.1.2). Goal 4 also strongly carries forward the 2022 plan's commitment to fight fraud, waste, and abuse in FCC programs (compare 2022 Objective 6.3, with 2026 Objective 4.3, which adds metrics on enforcement actions, improper payment error rates, and audit findings). Gone from the operational goal are the 2022 plan's workforce development and workforce diversity commitments (Performance Goals 6.2.5–6.2.7 have no counterpart).

What to Watch

Strategic plans matter most when the annual performance reports come due. Three things are worth tracking between now and 2030.

1. The network deployment metrics: the FCC has committed, in writing, to measuring whether locations are served by two or more terrestrial providers at 100/20 Mbps and whether broadband adoption rises—metrics that could cut against the plan's own deregulatory narrative if competition and adoption stagnate.
2. The USF strategy: "modernize... consistent with the intent of Congress" will acquire concrete meaning as the FCC and Congress act on universal service reform.
3. The copper retirement metrics: the plan measures how fast the FCC approves discontinuances, but its only consumer-facing metric is the "% change in total locations with copper connections as the only terrestrial broadband option available" (Objective 1.4, Performance Metrics)—a figure that will bear watching in rural areas where the replacement for copper may be wireless or satellite rather than fiber.

The 2022 plan asked to be judged on whether 100 percent of the country got affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband. The 2026 plan asks to be judged on how much spectrum is auctioned, how fast applications are processed, and how many rules are removed. Both are legitimate ways to run a communications agency. But they are not the same way. The difference will be measured, year by year, in the performance reports each plan requires—and the households the 2022 plan named—low-income Americans, students, Tribal communities—are no longer part of the scorecard.

See the Plans

• Strategic Plan (2026 - 2030)
• Strategic Plan (2022 – 2026)
• Strategic Plan (2018 – 2022)

Notes

1. Counts throughout are raw occurrences in each plan's full text; the 2018 and 2022 plans restate goal language verbatim, so deduplicating would shrink the numbers on both sides without changing the pattern.

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

© Benton Institute for Broadband & Society 2026. Redistribution of this email publication - both internally and externally - is encouraged if it includes this copyright statement.

For subscribe/unsubscribe info, please email headlinesATbentonDOTorg

Kevin Taglang
Executive Editor, Communications-related Headlines
Benton Institute
for Broadband & Society
1041 Ridge Rd, Unit 214
Wilmette, IL 60091
847-220-4531
headlines AT benton DOT org

Share this edition:

Broadband Delivers Opportunities and Strengthens Communities