BEAD Projects Could Require 86,000 Permits Nationwide, Analysts Say
ACLP researchers said that was likely an undercount
WASHINGTON, Aug. 4, 2026 – Projects under the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment program are likely to require at least 86,400 permits in all, and potentially many more, according to a new report from New York Law School.
The median terrestrial BEAD project will need something like 11 permits from eight different permitting authorities, and one in seven will require more than 20 permits, the law school’s Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute estimates.
Nearly half of the total permits will come from federal entities, the group found, and 95 percent of projects will need at least one federal permit. State permits will be required from 76 percent of projects, municipal permits from 62 percent, and private railroad or utility rights-of-way from 71 percent.
Michael Santorelli, director of ACLP, said the 86,400 figure was likely an undercount.
The group split BEAD projects by county (they’re defined differently depending on the state) and counted each instance of project area’s locations being in or near mapping layers that indicate a permit. Those include federal land and wetland boundaries, railroads, and historical places, among others.
That could lead to federal permits being counted more than once (for example, a single project stretching across two counties would only in practice need one federal permit), but Santorelli said the group controlled for that where it could.
ACLP also only counted permits from counties and municipalities once, despite those authorities typically issuing more than one permit, Santorelli said. The group also focused on the served locations rather than fiber routes, which he said made it likely the various rights-of-way permits were undercounted too.
“On net, the figures are very much a lower bound. It was never meant to be an engineering-grade study of any one build, just an illustration of the overall magnitude and distribution of permitting exposure nationally,” Santorelli said in an email.
The analysis focused on the more than 2.9 million BEAD locations that will receive service from non-satellite ISPs. Satellite providers are simply required to send a dish to a user’s house, which won’t trigger a construction permit.
NTIA efforts
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is managing BEAD at the federal level, has been working for years to reduce the permitting burden on program participants.
The $42.45 billion program was set to have an even bigger focus on fiber under the Biden administration, and the agency foresaw a deluge of permits that all levels of government were ill-equipped to process quickly.
The agency developed a digital tool for shepherding projects through the federal environmental and historical review process, and expanded a suite of exemptions to those rules that allow certain kinds of projects to be cleared without an intensive review.
The tool appears to be working in some cases. In Louisiana, the state’s winners have largely cleared those federal reviews, and the broadband office said the typically monthslong process was done in two days in some cases.
That still leaves state and local permitting authorities, not to mention other federal land management agencies. NTIA has convened roundtables with states and other federal agencies, and is requiring states to convene their own stakeholder meetings and field complaints from ISPs.
In the report, Santorelli and ACLP data analyst Alex Karras wrote that one additional option might be using remaining BEAD funds to boost local permitting capacity. More than half the program’s budget will be available for such “non-deployment” uses after Trump administration efforts to drive down project costs.
“Municipalities that lack the resources to review and approve BEAD-related permits could benefit from a short-term infusion of funds to hire additional staff or outsource these functions,” they wrote. “States that have yet to do so could invest these funds in building digital tools to assist with BEAD deployments and future builds.”
NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth has spoken positively about using non-deployment funds to ease permitting burdens. The agency is behind on producing guidance on how states can use those funds, and is now aiming to get that out this summer.
