USTelecom Pushed for White House Environmental Review Guidance

DALLAS, April 14, 2026 – Major broadband trade group USTelecom pushed for new federal permitting guidance that the White House released on April 9, the group’s CEO said Tuesday.

USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter said at the Connected America show here the group was pushing hard to speed up federal permitting – which it has indeed been doing both before Congress and the Federal Communications Commission.

He said one of the group’s primary aims was to “cut duplication. Where infrastructure already exists, don’t study the same ground twice.”

“The White House just on Thursday advanced exactly this guidance to federal agencies,” he said. “And we worked hard behind the scenes for a year to get this principle over the finish line.”

The White House’s Council on Environmental Quality did release Thursday new guidance for agencies on how to exclude projects from full environmental reviews. The National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to evaluate potential environmental effects of infrastructure builds before breaking ground.

Agencies can institute “categorical exclusions” that allow certain kinds of projects, like those the agency has already done and determined will have minimal impact, to bypass a complete review while still complying with NEPA.

The new guidance on creating those categorical exclusions encouraged agencies to look through their records of completed reviews for kinds of projects that could be exempt from granular reviews in the future. It also urged agencies to consider expanding existing exclusions to cover additional, similar kinds of projects.

Agencies could also simply take up categorical exclusions created by other agencies, the guidance said, after consulting with that agency. The guidance discouraged opening that process up for public comment and said it would not be necessary to consult CEQ.

The guidance was similar to a draft memo produced by CEQ after the Trump administration asked agencies to uopdate their NEPA rules.

Also among USTelecom’s asks were 30-day shotclocks for permits on federal lands – “If there’s not a decision, that’s the decision,” Spalter said – and an ability to keep building when delays are “unreasonable or unsolvable.”

The group has been asking for shot clocks on local permitting agencies as well, both from legislators and the FCC. Local officials have opposed this, saying they either don’t have the resources to process permits as quickly as desired or need to spend time reviewing projects to ensure safety.

The FCC requires NEPA reviews of many wireless deployments, since providers are often using FCC spectrum licenses. Most are categorically excluded. 

The agency last year sought comment on whether NEPA should apply at all to builds carried out under one of its licenses.

The Commerce Department has since the Biden administration adopted a number of categorical exclusions for its Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, an effort to cut down on review times as a flood of projects get underway. The agency has set up an electronic system to process NEPA reviews and funnel BEAD projects toward categorical exclusions.