November 20, 2025
Washington, D.C. (November 19, 2025) – USTelecom – The Broadband Association filed comments in the FCC’s Build America: Eliminating Barriers to Wireline Deployment proceeding, calling for reasonable, cost-based, and transparent standards that end the costly maze of state and local permitting rules holding back America’s broadband future.
America’s broadband providers are building modern, high-speed networks at record pace. Yet across the country, deployment continues to be slowed, stalled, or stopped by a patchwork of duplicative permits, unpredictable review timelines, and excessive fees. These barriers divert investment away from construction, delay federal funding projects, and keep communities waiting for the connections they need to compete.
The Problem:
Broadband providers consistently face permitting delays that drag on for months and fees untethered from any real cost. With BEAD funds flowing to states this year, these impediments threaten the timely completion of federally funded broadband projects, leaving families, businesses, schools, and hospitals without the modern connectivity they need. This connectivity is also vital for Americans as we barrel towards an AI-powered future and its infrastructure requirements. As USTelecom President and CEO Jonathan Spalter has said, “without fiber broadband, these new and powerful AI data centers will be nothing but refrigerators.”
Some of the more egregious examples:
- Maryland Mailing-Window Trap: One Maryland city’s process requires a chain of sequential hearings tied to rigid public-notice mailing windows. Missing a window by even one day restarts the entire process, routinely pushing approval timelines past five months.
- Undermining Federal Funding Projects: A provider in Oklahoma, using government grants to expand broadband access, had to wait months for approval of a right-of-way permit for a segment of highway that won’t be built for years. The delay jeopardized the provider’s ability to complete the project during the federal funding window.
- Shot Clocks Ignored: Several states have statutory review timelines that agencies routinely disregard, including a state where a 60-day shot clock has never once been met. Providers are forced into open-ended delays despite clear legal requirements.
- Minnesota’s $90K-Plus Single-Block Fee: Costs can be as prohibitive as timelines. A Minnesota city demanded a $63,000 permit fee plus $28,964 in per-foot charges for a single block of fiber. After the city refused to honor a compromise on burying fiber, the broadband provider was forced to walk away from the project.
- Florida 18-Month Delay: One Central Florida city stretched routine broadband construction out for up to 18 months by requiring engineering certifications that state law does not require for broadband providers. Another Florida city applied additional burdens by demanding a $250,000 cash bond, in conflict with Florida statute, which was held by the city long after the project completed.
The Solution:
Using its authority under section 253 of the Communications Act, the FCC should take three concrete actions to return America’s permitting to the realm of common sense:
- Establish Uniform National Timelines: Adopt reasonable shot clocks for wireline permitting, allowing no more than 60 days for standard projects and no more than 90 days for complex or multi-jurisdictional projects.
- Require Fees to be Cost-based, Transparent, and Nondiscriminatory: Fees should reflect only actual administrative costs related to processing applications or managing the right-of-way. Revenue-based, technology-based, or per-foot charges with no connection to cost should be presumptively unreasonable. The FCC should follow the same playbook for wired deployment that it used previously to turbocharge 5G deployment.
- Promote Coordination and Best Practices: Encourage states and localities to streamline reviews, adopt one-stop permitting portals, and use standardized forms, while also elevating successful state models like the Broadband Ready Communities Programs in Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Indiana, which have proven that faster reviews and low fees benefit communities by attracting broadband providers and speeding infrastructure deployment.
America cannot afford a permitting system that slows progress more than it speeds it. Clear national standards will help unlock faster, more efficient broadband construction and ensure every community can take part in the country’s innovation economy.