July 30, 2026
In testimony before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Media, Spalter calls on Congress to clear the permitting logjam holding back fiber broadband — the foundation for AI, quantum computing, and the next generation of American innovation
WASHINGTON, D.C. (July 30, 2026) — Jonathan Spalter, President and CEO of USTelecom – The Broadband Association, testified today before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Media at a hearing titled “Intelligent Networks: Powering Artificial Intelligence and Transforming Communications,” telling lawmakers that the greatest obstacle to unleashing America’s AI- and quantum-driven digital future is not a lack of technology or investment, but outdated, painfully slow government permitting.
“If I could leave this subcommittee with one primary contribution today, it is this: America’s AI future and the future of our entire innovation economy runs through fiber broadband networks,” Spalter said. “Not alongside them. Not around them. Through them.”
Spalter explained that AI is reshaping the very structure of internet traffic, reversing the historic one-way flow of data and demanding symmetrical, high-capacity connections that only fiber can deliver at scale. “For thirty years, the internet we have come to know was built like a freeway with eight lanes into town and two lanes out,” he told the subcommittee. “That asymmetric design was based on the assumption we humans and our devices would always receive far more data than we send. AI shatters that assumption.”
Spalter detailed how broadband providers — who have invested $2.2 trillion since 1996 and employ roughly 570,000 Americans — stand ready to build, but face chronic permitting delays across thousands of overlapping jurisdictions, including a Texas provider still waiting two years after a federal grant to a Big Bend National Park review held up over an analysis of forest resources in the Chihuahuan desert.
Spalter’s testimony builds on a recent op-ed he co-authored with National Governors Association CEO Brandon Tatum, published this week in Route Fifty, “The biggest barrier to building America isn’t politics. It’s paperwork,” which argued that America’s permitting system is broken “not by ideology, but by bureaucracy.”
Spalter urged Congress to pass the CLOSE THE GAP Act (S. 4561), the Broadband and Telecommunications RAIL Act (S. 3268), and the Accelerating Broadband Permits Act (S. 4448), and to reauthorize CISA 2015.
“The gateway is government. The levers that remain are the ones you hold,” he said. “Pull them, and the powerful modern networks through which America’s future transits will be built faster than anyone expects.”
Spalter’s full written testimony is available here.
His oral testimony is available here.