Six organizations have released a white paper aimed at helping broadband providers and local governments meet construction challenges, specifically around the issue of permitting.
The white paper — “Permitting Success: Closing the Digital Divide Through Local Broadband Permitting” — was written by Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, the American Association for Public Broadband, the Fiber Broadband Association, Brightspeed, and GFiber.
Commentary in the announcement about the paper suggests that it was timed to help the industry take full advantage of the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. “Not every [local] government is equipped for the coming wave of construction,” the paper says. “This is especially true in rural areas, where municipal resources are lowest and BEAD activity will be highest.”
With the goal of mitigating the pressure from what the white paper says will be historic levels of funding, it includes case studies and strategic checklists for broadband providers, local governments, and state and federal agencies, and provides insight focusing on three categories:
- Fostering partnerships between the permit seeker and the permitting authority
- Maximizing resources available to the permitting authority
- Ensuring transparency and consistency in the permitting process
“[T]he U.S. has launched a historic effort to bring broadband to every household in the country,” Drew Garner, the Benton Institute’s Director of Policy Engagement, said in the white paper announcement.
“But such extensive broadband construction will require extensive construction permitting, and construction permitting often happens at the local level. Thus, the historic effort to close the digital divide will ultimately flow through the permitting offices of our local governments. This paper is intended to help those offices and their applicants operate at maximum efficiency.”
The Biden Administration also thinks that permitting issues must be addressed. The White House stated in a recent fact sheet that, under the Biden Administration, federal government agencies processed more than twice the number of permits for broadband projects on federal lands and property than the Trump administration.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has established and adopted 36 new categorical exclusions to streamline permitting processes, including areas of historic preservation and threatened/endangered species compliance for broadband.
