In mid-October, the Arizona Commerce Authority’s ConnectAllAZ initiative announced a new Permit Finder tool. Last week, we spoke with Arizona State Broadband Director Nicolas Capozzi about the technology, why it was created, and where it’s headed.
Capozzi said his team in the Arizona State Broadband Office has been working on the Permit Finder for about a year and a half. The process began with conversations with providers, counties, and other stakeholders in preparation for broadband deployment.
While the Arizona Commerce Authority does not issue permits directly, “We’re statutorily required to coordinate across all stakeholders to ensure that we can effectively plan and deploy broadband and infrastructure projects across the state,” Capozzi said.
Capozzi was quick to say that the permitting processes throughout Arizona don’t have issues, but that the Permit Finder was created in anticipation of the volume of permits that will be required once Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program projects are underway.
“It’s a billion-dollar program, and the biggest concerns we heard from both providers and counties were the communication and the back and forth, where information might be difficult to find for providers, or maybe there’s a different permit that they weren’t expecting to come up that they would need,” Capozzi said. “This tool was set on addressing that issue, to provide as much information as we could up front.”
The reaction among Arizona stakeholders to the Permit Finder has been nothing but positive. “Even NTIA [the National Telecommunications and Information Administration] has shared their satisfaction with how we’re thinking about permitting and leading the charge on this,” Capozzi said.
He added that “at least a half a dozen” states have contacted him, hoping to learn more. The Arizona State Broadband Office is working with other states to help them understand the GIS mapping, interviews, and data required to create the Permit Finder.
The Permit Finder will have life beyond BEAD, too. While it was created to address the BEAD bottleneck, “Any provider or industry member who is deploying broadband or any other type of infrastructure project at the same time can also utilize this tool,” Capozzi said.
In addition to the Permit Finder, Arizona’s state agencies are well-aligned, understand the permit pipeline, and know what they can do to help streamline it. That’s important because Arizona faces unique challenges that other states don’t.
“About 87% of land in Arizona is government owned — whether that’s Tribal governments, federal government, state, or county,” Capozzi said. “So, the vast majority of our land crosses a lot of different jurisdictions, and we have a difficult terrain here. There are going to be different types of permits you’re going to need that you probably wouldn’t need in a smaller state or a state with flatter land.”
Arizona, BEAD, and the Future of the Permit Finder
The Arizona State Broadband Office has even more ambitious plans for the Permit Finder. Capozzi said a Phase 2 Permit Finder will launch by the end of the year.
“Probably in early December, any provider is going to be able to upload their designs. And, based off that design, the tool will basically spit out exactly what permits they would need,” he said.
This is good news for the state’s broadband deployment as they prepare for BEAD deployments. Capozzi is proud of the providers throughout Arizona and their investment in BEAD projects, which he says is about a 54% match. He said his team has had good conversations with the NTIA about the Arizona BEAD Final Proposal.
“I think we’re nearing the end here, to get approval. Soon, we’ll start deploying.”
More information about Arizona broadband — including links to state funding resources, grants made, BEAD news, state-specific Telecompetitor coverage, and more — can be found on Telecompetitor’s Broadband Nation webpage for the state.
