State Broadband Regulation

The industry spends a lot of time focusing on potential federal broadband regulation, and bills introduced in Congress get a lot of press. It’s easy to forget that a lot of broadband legislation happens at the State level. The National Conference of State Legislators tracks state legislation across the country and wrote an article summarizing state legislation related to broadband issues. 2025 was a busy year for broadband legislation, and there were over 600 broadband bills introduced in state legislatures, with 139 bills enacted into law. It’s likely that there will also be a lot of new legislation in 2026. States likely will tighten approval times for rights-of-way and permitting on state lands and highways to comply with the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program. An area that is seeing a lot of discussion is data centers, and it seems likely that states will pass legislation that establishes rules related to the placement, energy use, and environmental issues related to new data centers. While not directly related to broadband, it seems likely that there will be a lot of new state regulations related to AI.