President Trump Issues Executive Order to Streamline Rural Broadband Deployment

On January 8, 2018, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order on “streamlining and expediting requests to locate broadband facilities in rural America.” Specifically, the Executive Order will require Federal property managing agencies to evaluate the effectiveness of the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Common Form Application. This application was created to enable Federal agencies to process wireless facility siting requests more efficiently and provide information about the availability of locations for wireless broadband deployment. Additionally, all Federal property managing agencies will be required to report to the GSA on a quarterly basis information about the number of applications received, approved, and rejected.

President Trump said that streaming federal requests for broadband deployment should “reduce barriers to capital investment, remove obstacles to broadband services,” and “accelerate the deployment and adoption of affordable, reliable, modern high-speed broadband connectivity in rural America.”