Everyone wants faster broadband—no one wants to wait for the permits.
Modern communications infrastructure doesn’t stand still. Providers must keep investing in upgrades and expansion to meet consumer demand. Next-generation applications—artificial intelligence (AI), artificial reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR)—will require robust infrastructure to support them. That infrastructure depends on sustained investment from a wide range of firms, including broadband providers.
Those providers invest only when they can expect a return. Policymakers who want to unlock the benefits of next-generation infrastructure should focus on reducing the transaction costs tied to broadband deployment. Lower those costs, and more projects will pencil out.
Permitting stands out as one of the most significant of those costs. Before breaking ground or attaching wireless facilities to buildings and towers, providers must secure approvals from multiple local and federal authorities. These costs include not just permit fees, but also the uncertainty of denial and the delays that can stall projects.
H.R. 2289, the American Broadband Deployment Act (ABDA), offers one path forward. Sponsored by Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-Ga.), the bill would impose shot clocks on local permitting authorities to accelerate approvals and franchising, and require fees to remain cost-based and reasonable. More notably, it would streamline federal environmental and historic-preservation review, significantly reducing the burden on providers. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has cleared the measure, and the full House is expected to take it up in the coming weeks.
If the United States wants to lead in next-generation applications, it needs the infrastructure to match. Broadband deployment represents just one piece of that puzzle, but it’s a critical one. Reducing transaction costs will do more than ease deployment—it will encourage the investment needed to build the networks of the future.
High Costs, Higher Risks—and Plenty of Red Tape
Broadband deployment requires substantial upfront investment. Providers must incur high fixed costs before serving a single customer. That dynamic introduces real risk: firms rely on future subscriptions to recover those costs, and demand is never guaranteed. As competition has increased in recent years, capturing a sufficient customer base has become more uncertain.
Much of that investment is also sunk. If a project fails, providers can’t easily recover or redeploy key assets. Fiber, once buried, is costly to extract and reuse elsewhere. Labor and regulatory expenses are unrecoverable. When a deployment falls short, investors have little ability to mitigate losses, which raises the stakes of every build.
Economies of scale help offset these risks. Providers spread large, upfront costs across a broader customer base, lowering per-user expenses. Areas with higher population density and greater willingness to pay offer more reliable returns. By contrast, rural and lower-income communities present thinner margins and greater uncertainty.
These cost dynamics create a classic underinvestment problem. Broadband generates substantial social value that providers cannot fully capture. The benefits—improved education, higher property values, better health care delivery—accrue broadly, while deployment costs remain concentrated on the firm. A project may be socially efficient when total benefits exceed total costs. But if private returns alone fall short, rational firms will not build. Investors cannot capture the value that spills over into a student’s GPA, a farm’s valuation, or a rural hospital’s budget.
Transaction costs further complicate the picture. In a frictionless world, demand for high-speed broadband would justify investment. In practice, deployment requires navigating a dense web of property rights and regulatory approvals. Providers must identify asset owners, whether utility poles shared among electric utilities and legacy telecommunications providers, private easements for rural fiber routes, or the relevant authority over a given right-of-way. They must then negotiate access agreements, incurring legal, administrative, and time costs, and ensure compliance with those agreements.
These transaction costs often rival—or exceed—the cost of the hardware itself. A mile of standard 144-count fiber optic cable costs roughly $5,000 to $8,000 at wholesale, and can reach $30,000 at market rates. Make-ready work for a single pole ranges from $600 to $6,000, while replacing an unsuitable pole can cost $5,000 to $15,000. Permitting and access fees for public rights-of-way typically run $20,000 to $40,000 per mile—and continue to rise. Large projects also require extensive coordination and labor, from installation crews to traffic control, further driving up costs.
Death by Permits: The Real Cost of Getting to ‘Yes’
In a frictionless market, broadband providers would weigh material and labor costs against expected returns and build where the numbers work. In reality, transaction costs complicate that calculus. Permitting stands out as one of the most persistent and burdensome.
Start with access to public rights-of-way—the strips of land along roads and highways where providers must route cables. States and municipalities typically charge for that access, using a mix of one-time application fees, annual lease payments, or a % of gross revenues. The structure and magnitude of those fees vary widely.
Section 253 of the Telecommunications Act prohibits state and local requirements that effectively block telecommunications services. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has interpreted that provision to limit fees to amounts roughly tied to the government’s actual costs. In practice, enforcement remains uneven. Some localities continue to impose fees that exceed any plausible cost basis.
Cable providers operate under a slightly different regime. They typically secure access through local franchise agreements, which cap franchise fees at 5%. Localities, however, often sidestep that cap through in-kind contributions or additional taxes. The FCC has taken steps to curb those workarounds, but the tension persists.
Zoning presents another hurdle. Installing above-ground equipment—cabinets, small cells, towers—often requires multiple approvals, public hearings, and aesthetic review. Each layer adds time and expense. Delays can stretch for months or years, tying up capital that could otherwise fund additional deployment. Some states have adopted “shot clock” rules that impose deadlines on local decisions, but those timelines vary, and providers often must litigate to enforce them.
Construction permitting adds yet another layer. Before trenching or boring begins, providers must secure approvals from public works or transportation authorities governing street cuts, lane closures, and restoration. Restoration requirements—how a road must be repaired after construction—drive significant cost variation. Even when standards are clear, the permitting process itself creates delays, increasing carrying costs and complicating workforce scheduling.
Environmental and historic-preservation review introduce a distinct set of constraints. The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of major federal actions. Broadband projects that receive federal funding typically trigger that review. Wireless deployments often do as well, due to the FCC’s role in spectrum management, though the agency is revisiting that process.
Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) imposes similar obligations. Federal agencies must consider the effects of projects on properties listed in, or eligible for, the National Register of Historic Places. A Section 106 consultation can take six months or longer. In areas with dense historic resources, these reviews can become the binding constraint on deployment.
The costs add up quickly. Environmental and historic-preservation review alone is expected to cost mobile wireless providers $2.2 billion, with higher totals likely when wireline projects receiving federal support are included. The FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) have issued rules and guidance to streamline these processes. But without statutory reform, these reviews remain a durable source of delay and expense.
Less Waiting, More Building: A Permitting Reset
Congress has no shortage of proposals aimed at reducing permitting costs. ABDA provides a useful lens because it takes an expansive view of the problem, addressing both wireline and wireless infrastructure.
Start with state and local siting. The bill would amend Section 332 of the Communications Act to prohibit local zoning authorities from discriminating among providers and to impose firm shot clocks on siting decisions. Localities would have 90 days to act on requests for standard wireless facilities attached to existing structures, and 150 days for other facilities. For small cells, the deadlines shrink to 60 and 90 days. The bill would also extend shot clocks to wireline facilities, paired with deemed-granted remedies and cost-based fee standards. The goal is straightforward: reduce delays that tie up capital, increase risk, and discourage expansion.
The bill also revisits Section 6409 of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012. That provision requires approval of “eligible facilities requests”—projects that do not substantially change the physical dimensions of existing infrastructure, such as adding a small antenna to a macro tower. ABDA would extend that framework to wireline facilities. The logic tracks: if a project leaves existing infrastructure largely unchanged, it should move forward with minimal friction. The FCC is already examining how some localities attempt to evade Section 6409 by arguing that modifications defeat concealment and therefore count as “substantial” changes. The bill would narrow that maneuvering room and reduce the cost of incremental network upgrades.
Title II of the bill turns to cable franchising, aligning it more closely with other technologies. The bill would impose a 120-day shot clock on new franchise applications, with a deemed-granted remedy if authorities fail to act. It would also harmonize permitting rules for placing, constructing, or modifying cable equipment, applying the same 90- and 150-day shot clocks and cost-based fee requirements. This technology-neutral approach would further encourage competition and entry—trends that have already delivered lower prices and more choices for consumers.
Finally, ABDA targets federal environmental and historic-preservation review under NEPA and the NHPA. The bill would exempt a broad category of “covered projects” from review. That category includes collocations and modifications of existing wireless facilities, wireline deployments on eligible support infrastructure, small-cell installations, projects on brownfield sites or within floodplains, disaster-recovery work, and replacement facilities in public rights-of-way that are substantially similar to existing structures. It also covers projects on existing towers or buildings and facilities operating under geographic-area licenses that do not require antenna-structure registration. For easements on federal property, the bill would exempt from both NEPA and NHPA review any easement on property that already hosts a communications or utility facility, as well as easements within public rights-of-way.
Taken together, these reforms aim to do one thing: make it faster, cheaper, and more predictable to build broadband networks.
Faster Builds, Fewer Vetoes: The Local Control Tradeoff
Reforms like those in ABDA would lower deployment costs, add certainty, and encourage further network expansion. But they would also shift authority away from local governments. That tradeoff matters.
Many communities resist broadband projects for familiar reasons: construction disrupts daily life, and new infrastructure can alter local aesthetics. Local governments also incur real costs from these projects. If reforms limit their ability to recover those costs, local taxpayers may end up footing the bill.
ABDA attempts to preserve some local control. It allows jurisdictions to impose objective, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory aesthetic and concealment requirements. Even so, those constraints may not give local officials enough flexibility to address community-specific concerns.
There’s no question that a patchwork of local rules increases costs and can stall deployment. Federal policy aims to expand broadband access nationwide. Still, any effort to streamline permitting must grapple with the tradeoff: faster, more predictable deployment on one hand, and reduced local control on the other.
Build Faster or Stay Stuck: The Choice Ahead
To meet the demands of next-generation applications, the United States will need infrastructure that can handle significantly higher loads. Broadband sits at the center of that challenge. But building and upgrading networks requires sustained private investment—and today’s permitting regime makes that investment harder to justify.
The FCC has taken steps to rein in some of these costs. Still, meaningful reform will likely require congressional action. Local permitting processes, right-of-way access rules, and zoning requirements vary widely across jurisdictions, often with little connection to the actual costs imposed by a project. Delays can stall deployment altogether. Uncertainty adds risk, and risk dampens investment—especially when providers cannot fully capture the broader social benefits of expanded connectivity.
Environmental and historic-preservation review add another layer of delay and expense. These requirements can stretch timelines and push otherwise viable projects into the red. A more uniform and streamlined approach would lower costs, reduce uncertainty, and accelerate the buildout of infrastructure needed to support AI, AR, and VR.
There’s no free lunch. Streamlining permitting will inevitably curtail local authority. That tradeoff is real, and Congress should confront it directly when considering legislation like ABDA. If the goal is more broadband, faster, something has to give.
