Some officials, lawmakers look to speed up permitting for broadband projects

As state and local governments wrestle with the major investments and planning needed to build out broadband internet, permitting for those projects is emerging as a key issue. States are desperate to spend the money they have available from the federal government’s $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, but equally desperate to make sure those projects aren’t bogged down in years of red tape and permitting problems. Broadband represents a major component of states and localities’ future economies. But getting the projects going is perhaps one of their biggest obstacles.“Too often, broadband deployment is prevented or delayed because of burdensome, opaque, and expensive permitting processes that exist at every level of government—federal, state, and local,” Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, said during a recent hearing. “These unnecessary obstacles not only increase costs for deployment, but they also delay progress for communities that have already waited far too long.” That subcommittee hearing, where lawmakers marked up more than two dozen bills designed to “streamline” broadband permitting, saw a variety of proposed solutions.