The Standard Fees to Expedite Evaluation and Streamlining Act (Standard FEES Act), if passed by Congress, would direct the General Services Administration (GSA) to establish a common fee schedule for applications to build communications sites on federal property. The Act would require each executive agency to adopt regulations that align with the common fee schedule.
The Expediting Federal Broadband Deployment Reviews Act would authorize the NTIA to establish an interagency "strike force" to ensure that each Federal land management agency "prioritizes the review of requests for communications use authorizations." The strike force would conduct periodic calls among those agencies and monitor their progress. And within 270 days after the Act becomes law, the NTIA would be required to submit to Congress a report on "the effectiveness of the strike force in ensuring that Federal land management agencies prioritize reviews of requests for communications use authorizations.
The Federal Broadband Deployment Tracking Act would require the NTIA to submit to Congress a plan for the agency to track requests for communications use authorizations on federal property and provide transparency to applications regarding the status of their applications.
The Deploying Infrastructure with Greater Internet Transactions and Legacy Applications (DIGITAL Applications Act) would require the Interior and Agriculture Departments to set up online portals to accept, process, and dispose of common form applications to deploy communications facilities on federal property.
The Facilitating DIGITAL Applications Act would require the NTIA to provide Congress with reports on whether the Interior and Agriculture Departments have, in fact, established online portals for accepting form applications.
Taken together, these bills have the potential to streamline application processes for construction of broadband facilities and to improve broadband coverage across America. Although many reforms to broadband infrastructure siting processes have focused on state and local regulatory barriers to building and significantly upgrading facilities, the foregoing reform bills passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee direct efforts to deployments on federal property. This is a needed area of attention. And reforms targeting infrastructure siting on federal property do not present the structural federalism and local control issues that frequently are posed by federal preemption of state laws. The House Energy and Commerce Committee deserves credit for addressing communications infrastructure siting on federal property, and the House of Representatives should now do its part to advance these bills.
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