Wireline Telecommunications Permitting Challenges: Economic Impact of State and Local Permitting Practices

There is ample evidence of jurisdictions adopting a variety of egregious permitting practices, spanning fees, requirements, timelines, and approvals. The pervasiveness of these practices, including across jurisdiction type and size/density, and the resulting economic harm to wireline deployment make them worth intervention. Our economic modeling identified the permitting practices with the greatest negative impact on wireline deployment. We modeled 12 wireline permitting scenarios, each capturing a common egregious permitting practice, and identified the following permitting practices as having the greatest negative economic impact:

• One-Time ROW per Foot Access Fees
• Recurring ROW Occupancy Fees
• Degradation Fees
• Restrictive Construction Requirements
• Sequential Approvals
• Contingent Approvals