Senators Steve Daines (R-MT) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ) Wednesday introduced the bipartisan “Accelerating Rural Broadband Deployment Act” to increase access to existing infrastructure to enable easier and faster broadband deployment.
Daines said the measure capitalizes on existing infrastructure, and Kelly explained the legislation “will cut red tape and help broadband projects move faster in rural communities.”
The bill would:
- Make it easier for broadband companies to receive federal-right-of-way licenses allowing them to install broadband alongside existing infrastructure like federal highways.
- Ensure costs of federal-right-of-way licenses are fair market prices.
- Increase transparency into the federal right-of-way license awarding process.
Industry supports the measure. NATE: The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association, said its member companies and their technician workers are on the front lines of deployment. “This bill will eliminate red tape and speed up the process of enabling connectivity to rural, unserved and underserved regions of the country,” said NATE President/CEO Todd Schlekeway.
“High costs are a large enough barrier to deploying broadband service to rural areas without adding costly, time consuming processes for gaining access to federal lands. This legislation will make it easier to deploy essential broadband service to some of the hardest to reach areas of our country,” said Shirley Bloomfield, CEO, NTCA — The Rural Broadband Association.
And USTelecom President/CEO Jonathan Spalter said “too often, our network innovators bump into red tape and outdated rules that can make construction slow, inefficient or nearly impossible.” He called the measure a common-sense approach. “This plan expedites access to federal rights-of-way and streamlines the building process in service of a universal, bipartisan goal: bring the power and promise of broadband connectivity – the 21st century’s indispensable resource – to every corner of the country.”
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