The FCC deleted rules it no longer uses. Nobody knows what they were for.

The Federal Communications Commission removed a list of old rules from its books. The agency says these rules were outdated, obsolete, or unnecessary.

Government agencies often accumulate rules over decades. Many of these rules become irrelevant as technology or markets change. This kind of cleanup is rare, and it usually means an agency is trying to streamline its operations or reduce regulatory burdens. It also means someone had to go through old rulebooks and decide what was actually useless.