National Broadband Plan could derail local rights-of-way authority

The National Association of Counties and other local governments fear the Federal Communications Commission will use the National Broadband Plan to take significant rights-of-way (ROW) management authority away from local governments or threaten county budgets at a time that local governments are suffering layoffs.

Presently, the FCC is considering whether to change the ROW fee structure to only consider "cost recovery." Under the Communication Act, local governments are entitled to "fair and reasonable compensation" for right-of-way access. NACo believes that setting ROW compensation at only cost-recovery would be a windfall to private telecommunications companies that would not result in any increased broadband deployment ­ instead, it would only result in decreased costs to these companies and possible layoffs of county employees or losses of services. NACo holds that the FCC has no legal authority over local ROW permitting or fees, and rejects any argument that "fair and reasonable compensation" is limited only to cost recovery. To support these claims in a filing with the FCC, the National Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) included detailed economic and academic studies which showed that limiting local compensation for ROW fees would not lead to increased broadband accessibility but would instead result only in increasing the "digital divide."