The House of Representatives Subcommittee on Communications and Technology has marked up several broadband permitting bills.
Congress marks up bills to formally review, amend, and vote on changes to a bill before it is sent to the full chamber for consideration. This process allows committee members to propose amendments, negotiate, and refine the legislation’s text based on input from hearings and other discussions. The markup concludes when the committee agrees, by a majority vote, to report the bill (with any adopted changes) to its parent chamber.
The package of bills is designed to help streamline the permitting process for broadband and other telecom-related projects.
“This package of common-sense permitting reforms will help unleash additional broadband infrastructure builds in communities all across the country,” said FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in a prepared statement.
“This will not only ensure that more families have access to high-speed connectivity, but it will drive down the prices for broadband services by cutting out excessive costs. Getting this done will be a great win for the country.”
“There is no better time than now to enact these bills. We are on the verge of closing the digital divide,” Richard Hudson (R-MC), subcommittee chairman, said in a prepared statement about the broadband permitting bills.
“Deployment will soon begin through the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. But for this program to succeed, permitting reform is essential. Otherwise, all this money will be tied up in unnecessary reviews and bureaucratic delays. We cannot let the millions of unserved and underserved Americans continue waiting for the connectivity they need simply because we failed to modernize outdated rules.”
Permitting is one of the most consequential factors in broadband infrastructure deployment in this country, according to a report from the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA).
The report — “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” — highlights the best practices and persistent barriers in the permitting process.
According to the report, there are communities that use permitting as a strategic tool, centralizing review teams and coordinating utility needs to accelerate broadband deployments. But “others are bogged down by fragmented workflows, unclear standards, and costly legal disputes.”
