- The House’s move to advance permitting reform sparked mixed reactions
- Rep. Pallone opposed a bill that mandates deadlines for state and local permit review
- Legislation may have minimal BEAD impact, a consultant told us
The broadband industry has long complained about cumbersome permitting processes, but the legislative gears are starting to turn on reform.
The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee approved Wednesday a batch of seven broadband permitting bills, which will advance to the full House for a vote. Most of the legislation is geared toward improving the permitting process on federal lands, but one bill – H.R.2289, the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2025 – aims to overhaul permitting across the federal, state and local levels.
That bill would establish shot clocks for state and local permitting processes and exempt certain projects from National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and National Historic Preservation Act reviews.
If a state or local government “fails to take final action” to grant or deny a permitting request within the applicable timeframe, that project would be deemed approved.
But the deadline enforcement drew opposition from Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who argued that’s not the way to address broadband deployment barriers.
“Putting arbitrary deadlines on state, local, and Tribal governments to start and finish complicated permit reviews is opposed across the board by the local officials who are responsible for doing the work,” he said in a statement.
Pallone instead called on Congress to invest in helping state, local and Tribal offices “hire sufficient numbers of qualified staff to speed up permit reviews.” Tribal Ready CEO Joe Valandra similarly told Fierce tribes typically don’t have enough staff to tackle big broadband projects.
We’ll have to wait and see if the legislation can make its way through the House and eventually the Senate. Nevertheless, telecom trade groups ACA Connects, WIA and WISPA praised the Committee’s passage.
Permitting is “essentially a crippling, hidden tax,” WISPA Director of Communications Mike Wendy told Fierce. “So, anything that decreases the time, cost and complexity there is welcome.”
Will the legislation help BEAD?
Congress’ move to advance permitting reform comes as NTIA is finally approving plans for the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. As of December 2, the agency greenlit 29 final proposals from states and territories.
However, Marc Powell, managing director at consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal, is skeptical the proposed legislation will make much of a difference in speeding up BEAD deployments.
He told Fierce while the changes “can’t hurt,” they’re limited in scope since most of the bills apply only to federal buildings and properties. Powell also argued NEPA and other federal compliance isn’t the biggest impediment to broadband builds, “NIMBY often is.”
Perhaps the legislation could help states with vast portions of federal territory. At Broadband Nation Expo, Nevada broadband director Brian Mitchell noted over 86% of the state is covered by federal land. Alaska is another state with a large concentration of federal territory and federally recognized tribes.
Rather than wait for federal permitting reform, Arizona recently launched its own permit finder, a tool that provides ISPs and other stakeholders information on the necessary permits and points-of-contact they need to make deployment progress.
Arizona state official Nicholas Capozzi, who spoke at a state broadband panel at BBNE, said he believes permitting is at its core “an information sharing issue.”
Permits over railroads
The House Committee also advanced the Broadband and Telecommunications RAIL Act, which seeks to make it easier for ISPs to deploy across railroad tracks – often regarded as one of the biggest permitting hurdles.
Ray LaMura, president of Virginia’s Broadband Association, said at BBNE the railroad companies can charge ISPs as much as “hundreds of thousands of dollars” just to cross their right-of-way or run fiber alongside tracks.
The issue has gotten so prevalent that free space optics (FSO) companies like X-Lumin are touting the technology as a “powerful use case” to help operators hop over railroads and rivers, thus getting around that permitting process.
The RAIL Act aims to clarify the notification and application process for fiber railroad crossings, apply shot clocks on reviews as well as limit application fees.