Slow permitting approval process? There’s a federal committee for that.

For communications companies seeking to expand broadband networks to new customers, a slow permitting process is the ultimate bane. The Federal Government is now stepping up and spending its money to help address this challenge.

The United States has a goal of providing broadband access to every citizen in the country, effectively bridging the digital divide between those who have access to high-speed internet and the roughly 30 million Americans who don’t.

With the Inflation Reduction Act and other recently passed legislation and programs such as the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program, the Federal Government has made significant funding available to help fuel broadband expansion.

That’s the good news.

The bad news stems from the bottleneck currently taking place within the permit review process.

In April 2023, officials from several broadband groups, as well as former Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member Michael O’Rielly, argued before the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee for the need to remove barriers to broadband deployments and streamline environmental and historic preservation review processes.

Lengthy review times, exacerbated by the influx of applications spawned by funding incentives, have already caused significant deployment delays that many in the telecom industry bemoan have stretched months and years.

With the BEAD Program set to provide $42 billion to expand high-speed internet access by funding planning infrastructure deployment in all fifty states, the problem of slow permitting reviews may get worse before it gets better.

The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council seeks to change that.

Created in 2015 and with a new executive director (Eric Beightel)  appointed in 2023, the Council aims to streamline the federal permitting process for large infrastructure projects by bringing together stakeholders from 16 member agencies.

One of the ways the Permitting Council seeks to ensure permitting moves as smoothly as possible for BEAD and other broadband-expanding projects, according to its executive director at an August 2023 Keynote address, is to spend $25 million to help federal agencies staff up for the impending influx of permit applications that will come with BEAD.

It’s worth noting, as Beightel did in his address at Fiber Connect in August 2023, that the 2022-enacted Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) included $350 million in funding for the council to fund its efforts over nine years, funding he asserts can help state and local entities reform their permitting processes.

Fast forward to October 11, 2023. The Permitting Council announced it will expand its allocation to nearly $155 million (taken from the IRA) to help agencies expedite the permitting review process.

Agencies receiving financial help from the Permitting Council include the National Telecommunications and Information Agency (NTIA), which oversees the BEAD program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Development Agency, and the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, among others.

Beightel noted,  “With these funds, agencies will be equipped like never before to handle the oftentimes heavy workload of permitting review.”

In our latest IKE on-demand webinar, we discuss other industry challenges and how communications companies and their engineering partners can expand to new markets faster and optimize the joint-use process using data acquisition and analysis solutions.

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