US FCC Form 499 Telecom Provider Directory & Change Intelligence

Use the official FCC Form 499 Filer Database as a privacy-minimised directory/search API, or monitor factual changes to FCC filer records. The Actor is designed for telecom vendors, regulatory-data workflows, B2B enrichment pipelines, and AI agents that need source-backed filer identity and segmentation without redistributing the FCC contact/person blocks.

What you get

• Directory — current FCC filer records, with active FCC filer records returned by default.
• Search — deterministic case-insensitive substring search over the FCC Legal Name of Reporting Entity plus exact Filer ID, FRN, communications-type, status, and jurisdiction filters.
• Monitor — stateful change signals using Filer 499 ID as the source-native filer-record key.
• Sample — deterministic synthetic FILER records and monitor signals with zero FCC HTTP and zero production-state access.

The official source is the FCC Form 499 Filer Database. Runtime acquisition uses the FCC's documented complete XML endpoint (XML=TRUE with no additional search parameters) before any user filters are applied.

Privacy-minimised output

V1 intentionally emits only these source-supported regulatory identity / segmentation fields:

• filerId
• frn (secondary identifier; it is not treated as unique)
• reportingEntityName — the FCC Legal Name of Reporting Entity
• filerStatus
• principalCommunicationsType
• serviceJurisdictions
• source/detection timestamps and source URL

The Actor does not output DBA/trade/former names, street addresses, officer/person names, agent-for-service names, phone/fax/email, EIN/tax identifiers, external person enrichment, or inferred legal form. A Form 499 reporting entity can be a sole proprietor, so reportingEntityName can itself be a person's name in its public FCC regulatory context. The Actor does not attempt to classify names as people or companies.

FCC filer-record status

filerStatus is strictly an FCC Form 499 filer-record status derived from the official source:

• ACTIVE — the FCC record has no end_date.
• NO_LONGER_ACTIVE — the FCC record has an end_date.

Phase-A validation showed that the Filer ID set with blank end_date matched the FCC official Active Only search set. This status must not be interpreted as a claim that a business is currently operating, closed, compliant, non-compliant, licensed, or unlicensed.

Modes

directory

Fetches and validates the complete FCC XML, then filters the privacy-minimised records. Directory mode never opens or updates monitor state. Default filerStatus is ACTIVE; with the measured Phase-A baseline this corresponds to about 9,004 active FCC filer records. Set filerStatus to ALL and raise maxItems when a complete all-status directory is desired.

Example:

{
  "mode": "directory",
  "filerStatus": "ACTIVE",
  "principalCommunicationsTypes": ["Interconnected VoIP"],
  "serviceJurisdictions": ["CA"],
  "maxItems": 10000
}

search

Uses the same complete acquisition and validation path, then applies a deterministic substring search over reportingEntityName. Search mode requires a non-empty search value and never touches monitor state.

{
  "mode": "search",
  "search": "telecom",
  "filerStatus": "ACTIVE",
  "maxItems": 250
}

monitor

The first valid monitor run stores a complete privacy-minimised snapshot and emits zero business signals. Later valid runs may emit only:

• FILER_ADDED
• FILER_STATUS_CHANGED
• COMMUNICATION_TYPE_CHANGED
• SERVICE_JURISDICTION_CHANGED

V1 deliberately does not emit DBA_CHANGED and does not store DBA/trade/former-name fields. It also does not emit a disappearance/removal signal. Filters and maxItems affect Dataset output only, never the complete stored snapshot. If source/schema guards fail, the run fails and the previous snapshot is retained. Snapshot commit is the final state mutation after Dataset and OUTPUT writes succeed.

sample

{"mode":"sample","maxItems":100}

Sample mode uses deterministic synthetic data through the production normalization/filter/diff/output-shaping logic. It performs zero official FCC HTTP, opens no production named key-value store, reads/writes no production monitor state, and reports snapshotUpdated: false.

Source safety and identity

Phase-A direct measurement of the FCC complete XML observed 20,851 filer records. All 20,851 had non-empty, unique Filer 499 IDs, so Filer 499 ID is the only primary stable key. FRN is secondary because the same measurement observed blanks and duplicate FRNs.

The Actor validates total-record and active-record ranges, Filer ID uniqueness, required identity fields, and material source-count collapse before output or snapshot mutation. maxItems never reduces acquisition or validation coverage.

Reuse and attribution

V1 redistributes selected factual regulatory fields from the public FCC machine-readable Form 499 database and excludes contact/person blocks and expressive submitted material. No contrary non-commercial restriction was identified for the selected factual fields during Phase A.

Suggested attribution: Source: FCC Form 499 Filer Database, Federal Communications Commission. Registration information is filed through USAC.

Important limitations

This Actor reports FCC source records and source-record changes. It does not determine whether an entity is currently doing business, licensed for another purpose, compliant, non-compliant, eligible for a service, or legally required to take an action. It provides no telecom, regulatory, or legal advice. Source values can be missing or change when FCC/USAC registration data changes.