Commissioner Ajit Pai On His Visit To Kansas City's Google Fiber Project

It is critically important that states and local communities adopt broadband-friendly policies when it comes to rights-of-way management. When broadband service providers seek to construct next-generation networks, they need to access government-controlled land, poles, and conduits in order to lay fiber and install other infrastructure. Currently, too many providers who try to obtain such access are confronted with daunting sets of federal, state, and/or municipal regulations that often delay and sometimes deter infrastructure investment and broadband deployment. This wasn’t the case in Kansas City. Instead, local governments made a significant upfront commitment to expedite and simplify the permitting process. Indeed, this was one of the main reasons that Google selected Kansas City out of the more than 1,100 communities that applied.

I encourage municipalities across the nation to study Kansas City’s example and to see if they can streamline their own rights-of-way management policies. In addition, the Federal Communications Commission should work with stakeholders to develop model regulations, guidelines, or best practices for rights-of-way management that facilitate fiber deployment while safeguarding legitimate government interests. In the end, consumers will benefit from a more proactive, forward-thinking approach to these matters. More generally, to enable the nationwide deployment of next-generation networks like Google Fiber, we need to eliminate regulatory barriers to innovation and investment at all levels of government. Whether we are dealing with economic regulation or rights-of-way management, we cannot apply 20th century approaches to our 21st century challenges.