FCC IT Upgrade Hits A Few Snags

Earlier this month, the FCC announced a 7-day shutdown of information systems for an information technology upgrade. That shutdown stretched to 10 days as the FCC found out it needed more time to reconnect its servers, which had been relocated off-site. Some systems came back into service earlier, but ones critical to broadcasters were not available until the end.

We did note a few glitches for items filed just prior to the system shutdown. Some of those filings were not automatically recognized by the FCC’s systems once they were returned to service. A few emails to FCC staff did the trick. If you filed something electronically in the hours before the IT system shutdown, it is probably a good idea to go back and check on it to be sure it is recognized in the system.

We’ve also noticed that some of the FCC’s filing systems, including CDBS, have had temporary, unannounced outages since the IT upgrade. The FCC has not announced such outages ahead of time (or acknowledged them after they occur), so we suspect that these are unexpected outages that may be related to ongoing efforts on the IT upgrade front.