Tag Archives: Permitting on Public Land

State Broadband Regulation

The industry spends a lot of time focusing on potential federal broadband regulation, and bills introduced in Congress get a lot of press. It’s easy to forget that a lot of broadband legislation happens at the State level,

NCSL (the National Conference of State Legislators) tracks state legislation across the country and wrote an article summarizing state legislation related to broadband issues. 2025 was a busy year for broadband legislation, and there were over 600 broadband bills introduced in state legislatures, with 139 bills enacted into law. The article is a great resource for anybody who wants to dig deeper since it links to the enacted bills that are mentioned in the story.

Poles and Permitting

Seventy of the enacted laws established new state rules related to pole attachments and permitting. We’re likely to see a flurry of more laws in this area in 2026 since BEAD grant rules require states to approve or deny applications for permits on State highways and land be approved or denied within 90 days. The bills highlighted in the article include:

  • Idaho HB 180 requires public utilities to allow space on poles for broadband, cable and telecommunications equipment and allows the Idaho Public Utilities Commission to mediate if parties cannot agree on rates, conditions, and timing. The legislature thought this law was needed since municipal pole owners are excluded from federal pole attachment rules.
  • Indiana SB 502 adopts the timelines required by BEAD and also establishes a timeline for quick mediation of disputes.
  • Maine HB 559 gives more authority to towns over approving the building of new poles. The law allows smaller towns than previously to deny applications to build new poles as long as the reason for the rejection is related to public safety or welfare.
  • Colorado HB 1056 and West Virginia HB 3144 allows for automatic approval of specific kinds of applications for rights-of-way and permits for wireless infrastructure.

Critical Infrastructure Protections

There has been a major uptick in damage and vandalism to communications infrastructure in recent years that has resulted in serious network outages. State legislatures reacted to passing legislation that establishes or creates penalties for those who damage networks. I discussed this topic in several blogs this year, one that asks when network damage might be considered to be terrorism, and one that looks at the trend of declaring broadband networks to be critical infrastructure.

The article provides links to the text of approved legislation that have increased penalties for those who damage communication infrastructure, enacted by Alabama SB 54, Iowa HB 879, Kansas HB 2061, Kentucky SB 64, Louisiana SB 22, Montana HB 257, and West Virginia HB 3504. A few states went even further, and Oklahoma HB 2104 and Texas SB 1646 categorized damage to communications infrastructure as felonies.

Looking Ahead to 2026

It’s likely that there will also be a lot of new legislation in 2026. As mentioned above, States likely will tighten approval times for rights-of-way and permitting on state lands and highways to comply with BEAD. An area that is seeing a lot of discussion is data centers, and it seems likely that states will pass legislation that establishes rules related to the placement, energy use, and environmental issues related to new data centers. While not directly related to broadband, it seems likely that there will be a lot of new State regulations related to AI.

Regulatory Shorts March 2025

The industry is awash with regulatory changes, and I’ll likely be writing more blogs like this listing some of the changes that impact small ISPs.

Supreme Court Refuses Second Review of NY Low Rates. ISPs were irate when the Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal case against the State of New York that requires ISPs with more than 20,000 customers to provide broadband for as little as $15 per month for qualifying low-income households. The ISPs scrambled and asked the Court a second time to take the case, and the Court declined for a second time. The law is already in effect in the state. Several other states, like California, Massachusetts, and Vermont, are now considering similar legislation.

Feds Talk About Fixing Permits on Public Lands – Again. There was a lot of talk in DC recently about finally fixing issues that make it slow and painful to get a permit to build fiber or other telecom infrastructure on federal land. My recollection is that the last three administrations took a swing at the issue, and yet there has been little meaningful improvement. We’ll have to see if the fourth time is the charm.

One-to-One Consent Law Vacated. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a ruling from the FCC that could have resulted in far fewer robocalls. In December 2023, the FCC passed a rule that required anybody who wants to call a consumer to have a one-on-one relationship with the called party, meaning the consumer had to either be an existing customer or give explicit permission to be called.

The law was passed because of a practice where marketing companies asks consumers for permission to be called by it or its ‘partners’. Companies that get callers to agree to this expanded permission then sell the lists to the other calling companies for a fee. The buyers of the list then act as if they have permission to call.

FCC Authority to Auction Spectrum? The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing under Chairman Senator Ted Cruz on February 19 to discuss the topic. There seemed to be bipartisan support for the idea of renewing the FCC’s auction authority. The FCC says that releasing new spectrum for cellular is one of its top priorities.

Tax Free BEAD Funding. Currently, any grant funding given to an ISP creates a taxable event, which means a huge tax penalty for any taxable entity that accepts a BEAD or other grant. I know ISPs who stayed out of BEAD because of this issue. A bipartisan group of Senators reintroduced the Broadband Grant Tax Treatment Act on February 24, which would make the proceeds from infrastructure grants non-taxable. The IRS used to be able to make the taxable/non-taxable decision, but that ability lapsed due to provisions in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

A New Twist on BEAD. Louisiana got approval from NTIA on January 13 for the broadband grants the state wants to make from the BEAD grant program. It turns out that there is an additional step before Louisiana can tell ISPs to move forward, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) also has to give a go-ahead for the funds to be released. That’s a delay that nobody built into their BEAD timelines – and Louisiana and other states are still waiting for NIST approval.