Excessive Permitting Threatens to Slow BEAD Deployment

This op-ed was originally published in Inside Sources.

Bureaucracy threatens to bog down the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program before it gets off the ground. This bureaucracy and subsequent delays could put billions of taxpayer dollars at risk.

A new study by the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School found that more than half of BEAD projects will require at least 10 permits, and one in seven will require more than 20 permits.

“Each permitting requirement triggers its own review process by separate authorities that take place over discrete timelines,” wrote authors Michael Santorelli and Alex Karras. “These processes can quickly become burdensome for ISPs, especially on projects with firm deployment deadlines, as in the case of BEAD.”

Digging further into the numbers, ACLP found that county permitting affects 100 percent of BEAD projects, federal environmental review affects 95 percent, state permitting (mostly highway rights-of-way issues) affects 76 percent, private or third-party agreements affect 71 percent, and municipal permitting affects 62 percent.

Because of significant jurisdictional overlap, with each governmental body having its own permitting process, the bureaucracy can become a headache for providers and slow the process of getting households connected. ACLP found that typical broadband infrastructure build under BEAD involves a median of eight authorities, with each requiring a separate permitting process that slows the progress.

Santorelli and Karras note that “before construction can begin, ISPs must first clear federal environmental and historic-preservation review, including (the National Environmental Policy Act), and then navigate a broader thicket of environmental, cultural, land-use, right-of-way, easement and jurisdictional permitting requirements. These include reviews of wetland and floodplain crossings, air-quality clearances, authorization to cross or attach to federal, state and tribal land, railroad and utility crossing agreements, and county- and municipal-level construction permitting.”

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance previously reported that railroad crossings are underestimated stumbling blocks for broadband growth. Running fiber across or alongside rail lines should be a routine infrastructure task, yet it has become one of the most effective choke points.

Ray LaMura, president of the Broadband Association of Virginia, said at the Broadband Nation Expo in November that “railroads have become one of the biggest barriers to broadband deployment” in his state and can charge excessive fees for right-of-way access.

The Broadband and Telecommunications RAIL Act targets this dysfunction by streamlining approvals and giving the Federal Communications Commission a role in resolving disputes that leave projects stuck in limbo. That bill seeks to clarify the notification and application process for fiber railroad crossings. The bill would also apply shot clocks and limit application fees. However, little action has been taken on the legislation since it was introduced last November.

Unfortunately, a bill that attempts to remove even more bureaucracy from the permitting process, the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2025, has also stalled in Congress. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce reported the legislation in December but has seen little action since. The bill would establish “shot clocks” ranging from 60 to 150 days, requiring governmental bodies to act expeditiously on permitting requests.

It would also exempt many projects from more rigorous review under the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. For example, the bill specifies that easement requests for broadband infrastructure projects do not constitute a “major federal action” under those acts, exempting them from meticulous review.

Critics rightly saw the Biden administration’s strict BEAD rules (including the historical and environmental review requirements) as hampering the program. ACLP points out that the compressed timelines and tight budgets associated with BEAD projects create additional financial strain on providers navigating the Byzantine bureaucracy of broadband permitting. Karras and Santorelli reasonably worry that if the status quo remains, overlapping permitting processes will create undue uncertainty for BEAD and overwhelm localities ill-equipped to manage the large influx of permits they must process.

The latest study shows that Congress must act now. With $42.5 billion in taxpayer money at stake for the BEAD program, lawmakers must ensure that red tape doesn’t block the path forward for closing the digital divide.