BEAD Broadband Builds Must Clear a Thicket of Overlapping Permits
BEAD
permitting
A national analysis of the BEAD footprint against 126 federal, state, and local permitting layers finds broadband builds face a broad, multi-jurisdictional permitting burden: over half of projects require more than 10 permits, and 1 in 7 require more than 20.
Key Takeaways
- BEAD-funded broadband builds face a broad, multi-jurisdictional permitting burden. Across the 6,933 terrestrial projects, the analysis identifies 86,402 distinct permits. Over half of projects require more than 10, and 1 in 7 require more than 20.
- Every project encounters county permitting. Beyond that, 95% require federal environmental review, 76% state permits (chiefly highway right-of-way), 71% private or third-party agreements, and 62% municipal permits. The typical build engages a median of 8 authorities, each a separate process that can delay a build.
- The exposure is geographically vast. BEAD projects overlap 2,449 counties and 12,146 municipalities nationwide, each a distinct government with its own permitting process.
- Water and infrastructure crossings are the two biggest permitting drivers. Wetlands and floodplains reach the most projects, but thousands more must cross or attach to existing infrastructure: roads and highways (4,964 projects), railroads (3,072 projects), and transmission and pipeline corridors. Together, these transportation and utility crossings will drive a significant share of BEAD permitting.
- These figures are a lower bound. Each permit is counted only once per project, even though a single county or municipality typically issues several distinct permits per build, and the analysis does not count features reached only by infrastructure running between premises.
NoteFull Report Available
This post summarizes our BEAD Permitting Analysis report, which includes the full layer inventory, permitting-authority breakdowns, and a detailed methodology.
Overview
The BEAD program will fund construction of broadband infrastructure to unserved and underserved locations across the United States. But before construction can begin, ISPs must first clear federal environmental and historic-preservation review, including NEPA, and then navigate a broader thicket of environmental, cultural, land-use, right-of-way, easement, and jurisdictional permitting requirements. These include reviews of wetland and floodplain crossings, air-quality clearances, authorization to cross or attach to federal, state, and tribal land, railroad and utility crossing agreements, and county- and municipal-level construction permitting.
Each permitting requirement triggers its own review process by separate authorities that take place over discrete timelines. These processes can quickly become burdensome for ISPs, especially on projects with firm deployment deadlines, as in the case of BEAD.
To quantify the breadth of this exposure, in the context of BEAD, we overlaid 2,942,440 funded locations across 3,783 terrestrial projects in the 50 states against 126 federal, state, and local permitting layers, and recorded, for every location, which triggers it sits inside or near. To make exposure comparable across states that define projects differently, we divide each project by county and report on the resulting project area, a project’s footprint within one county, yielding 6,933 project areas. Satellite-served locations are excluded throughout, because they require no physical plant and therefore no construction permits.
NoteReading “projects” and “permits”
A project in this post is a project area: one BEAD project’s footprint within a single county. The 3,783 funded projects split into 6,933 project areas, the unit we count. A permit is a permitting trigger: one project area intersecting one regulated layer, which marks at least one permit a build must obtain. Because a single authority often requires several, these counts are a lower bound.
This is a conservative estimate of permitting exposure, not an engineering permitting plan. It counts the permits a build is likely to encounter; it does not estimate the cost, duration, or outcome of any individual permit, and the figures are likely a lower-bound estimate.
Number of Permits Required
Permitting exposure is not confined to a handful of complex builds. Beyond the federal environmental review (including NEPA) that most projects face, every project requires at least the county permit, over half face more than 10 permits, and about 1 in 7 require more than 20. The chart below shows how projects distribute by the number of distinct permits they face.
Permits by Level of Government
The same 86,402 permits can be reorganized by who administers each. One view is reach: how many projects each level touches, where a project can appear under several levels.
Projects reached, by administering level
| Administered By | Projects Reached | % of Projects |
|---|---|---|
| Federal | 6,598 | 95% |
| State | 5,237 | 76% |
| Local (county) | 6,933 | 100% |
| Local (municipal) | 4,275 | 62% |
| Private / third-party | 4,934 | 71% |
The other view is share: each level’s slice of all permits.
Share of all permits, by administering level
| Administered By | Permits | % of Permits |
|---|---|---|
| Federal | 41,617 | 48% |
| State | 8,705 | 10% |
| Local (county) | 6,933 | 8% |
| Local (municipal) | 15,560 | 18% |
| Private / third-party | 13,587 | 16% |
| All levels | 86,402 | 100% |
Federal authorities are the largest single source: 95% of projects engage at least one, and federal permits account for 48% of all permits. State permitting reaches 76% of projects, driven by state departments of transportation, which administer the right-of-way and encroachment permits required along the interstate, US, and state highways near 72% of projects. County and municipal permitting is local: the county permit applies to every project, and municipal permitting to 62%. Approximately 2,449 counties and 12,146 municipalities will see BEAD deployments within their borders. The private / third-party row captures crossing and attachment arrangements with railroads, pipeline operators, and electric utilities, which 71% of projects engage.
Most Common Permits
The chart below groups the permits into thematic categories by the number of projects each reaches. County permitting is universal by construction; beyond it, water-related features (wetlands, floodplains, and impaired waters) are the most widespread environmental theme. Energy infrastructure (transmission lines, pipelines, and coal) and the interstate, US, and state highways that projects must cross or attach to follow close behind, and railroads reach a distinct tier of their own.
Why This Matters & How We Move Forward
In the spirit of the recently released movie version of The Odyssey, the preceding analysis can be seen as our attempt to detail the scale and scope of the next set of challenges facing ISPs in their journey towards finally leveraging BEAD funds to build their networks. Previously, ISPs had to navigate a storm of onerous Biden-era rules and requirements; a jarring though necessary course correction by the Trump NTIA as part of the Benefit of the Bargain round; continued battles over pole attachments; the mirage that is guidance about how non-deployment funds can be used; and the turbulence of a continuously shifting BEAD map. Now, ISPs face a thicket of byzantine permitting processes at the local, state, and federal levels that could slow or derail progress towards meeting BEAD’s goals at scale. And because this analysis counts each permitting requirement only once per project, the figures are likely a lower-bound estimate of the true burden.
Permitting issues in the broadband space are not new. Indeed, complaints about the lengthy timelines and high costs of securing permissions to build from relevant federal, state, and local actors have long been made by ISPs. However, the compressed timelines and tight budgets associated with BEAD projects make these complaints even more relevant and underscore the urgency of prioritizing reforms aimed at streamlining these processes. If the status quo remains, it is probable that NEPA/EHP review, federal land authorizations, state and local construction permits, railroad and utility crossings, easements, and other approvals will overlap, compound, and create uncertainty against BEAD’s deployment deadlines. At the same time, many localities remain ill-equipped to manage the large influx of permits and agreements they will have to handle for BEAD.
What is being done to address these issues?
As part of the BEAD Terms and Conditions, NTIA requires states to “establish Permitting Roundtables and/or working groups of relevant federal, state, local, and tribal authorities and representatives of impacted industries—including utility pole owners, railroads, communications providers, and BEAD subgrantees—that will:
Meet regularly to identify and facilitate resolution of any delays or disputes related to deploying BEAD-funded facilities.
Collect complaints (and supporting information) from Subgrantees that are not timely resolved through this process and escalate such complaints through the appropriate Permitting Roundtable or working group.”
Even so, it remains to be seen whether these efforts will yield impactful results. Numerous ISPs continue to grapple with, among other things, seemingly open-ended permitting review processes at every level and arbitrarily high costs to secure permits imposed mostly by local governments. Taken together, ISPs still face significant uncertainty as they move from planning to execution in their pursuit of deploying new networks with BEAD funds.
To date, progress towards comprehensive permitting reform has been piecemeal:
- Several states have proactively deployed resources to assist ISPs in navigating permitting processes. Arizona and New Mexico, for example, have launched permit finder tools to help their subgrantees. Other states have developed similar tools and resources, but it is unclear whether these tools will positively impact broadband deployments.
- The FCC is actively exploring how it might reform its rules to provide more clarity and consistency vis-à-vis some permitting processes. It has also been asked to consider preempting allegedly onerous permitting fees and processes.
- Ideally, state legislatures would have addressed these issues prior to BEAD awards being made, but that has not been the case. Nor has Congress acted, though several bills have been introduced that, if enacted, would address some permitting issues.
- Localities remain steadfastly opposed to efforts by Congress and state legislatures to do anything that might impede their ability to unilaterally set the terms, conditions, and fees associated with broadband permitting.
This leaves NTIA, which has taken a mostly hands-off approach to dictating permitting reforms at the state and local levels. Instead, it has required coordination among stakeholders in states (via roundtables) and provided stakeholders with resources detailing how they might go about reforming their permitting processes. As such, this means that much of the responsibility for embracing reforms aimed at streamlining the permitting process to facilitate timely and cost-efficient builds is squarely in the hands of states and their localities.
NTIA, though, could choose to be more active on these issues. For example, it could allow states to use leftover BEAD funds to improve local permitting processes. Municipalities that lack the resources to review and approve BEAD-related permits could benefit from a short-term infusion of funds to hire additional staff or outsource these functions. States that have yet to do so could invest these funds in building digital tools to assist with BEAD deployments and future builds.
In sum, the costs and delays stemming from a fragmented permitting landscape continue to burden ISPs. Policymakers at every level seem to appreciate that there is room to improve permitting processes, but progress towards comprehensive reforms is haphazard. With permitting issues holding back investment in an array of sectors, including broadband, BEAD could prove to be the tipping point toward comprehensive reforms that unlock investment and make it easier to build things in the U.S.
NoteMethodology
Each BEAD-funded location is treated as a point at its FCC Broadband Serviceable Location Fabric coordinates and analyzed against 126 federal, state, and local feature layers; 112 of them registered at least one trigger. The layer inventory is built on NTIA’s national permitting layer catalog (APPEIT), supplemented with several additional federal and state sources such as Census TIGER/Line highways. Grounding the set in NTIA’s own inventory guards against inflating counts with arbitrarily added layers. Land-ownership layers (federal, state, tribal, and other public land) use a 30-meter containment tolerance; proximity-sensitive layers (wetlands, floodplains, historic places, air-quality nonattainment areas, interstate, US, and state highways, and other energy and transport infrastructure) use a 100-meter buffer. County and municipal permitting is assigned by which jurisdiction a location falls in. Satellite-served locations are excluded throughout, because they require no physical plant and therefore no construction permits.
A permitting trigger is one project area triggering one layer, and marks at least one permit; because a single jurisdiction usually requires several permits per build and premises are points rather than routes, the totals are conservative and are best read as a lower bound on permitting exposure. Federal environmental review under NEPA is not tallied as a separate trigger; it is reflected in the federal environmental layers (wetlands, floodplains, and the like) whose presence prompts that review. Full methodological detail, the complete layer inventory, and the permitting-authority crosswalk are available in the full report.