House Preps Raft of Broadband-Boosting Drafts

The House Communications Subcommittee spent over two hours going over myriad legislative proposals to remove barriers to broadband infrastructure deployment, including streamlining permitting, making it easier to string wires on polls—by extending mandatory access provisions of telecom law to access to poles on federal lands—"dig once" mandates, and much more. They include a pole attachments bill discussion draft, H.R. 3805, the Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2015, a "dig once" bill to insure fiber conduit gets deployed whenever roads are built with federal funds, a Historical Review of Broadband Facilities Discussion Draft, an Agencies Locate Broadband Facilities Discussion Draft, a GSA Deadlines Discussion Draft, and an Inventory of Federal Assets Discussion Draft.

Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) suggested the bills could still use improvement, but that they were bipartisan proposals that could help boost infrastructure deployment by cutting down on "uncertainty and delay." That includes by requiring a government database of federal infrastructure assets, and requiring access to poles on federal lands at a statutorily regulated rate. Together, the bills are "intended to improve and streamlining government processes," said Ranking Member Anna Eshoo (D-CA). She called them all "really terrific ideas," and pushed for packaging them together and passing them as one bill. She said collectively, the bills "would put a dent in the problem that we have."