With House Effort Stalled, NCTA Presses Senate on Broadband Permitting
Cable group asks Senate committee leaders to include broadband reforms in any permitting package.
WASHINGTON, August 13, 2026 – Cable industry trade group NCTA is asking the Senate to succeed where the House hasn’t yet.
In a letter Friday, NCTA President and CEO Cory Gardner urged the leaders of two key Senate committees to include broadband-specific provisions in any permitting legislation moving through Congress.
The letter arrives as the federal government prepares to distribute roughly $21 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program funding, matched by more than $11 billion in private investment, money intended to connect households and small businesses that still lack access to high-speed internet.
“For those investments to succeed, Congress must help remove barriers that delay projects and increase costs,” Gardner wrote. “American taxpayers deserve to see these investments deliver results, and consumers in unserved areas deserve timely access to affordable broadband services.”
Providers seeking to build out networks must secure a patchwork of authorizations, from state and local governments as well as numerous federal agencies, before they can access the poles, rights-of-way, and easements needed to run new lines.
Gardner argued that permitting bottlenecks are increasingly standing in the way of that money translating into actual connections.
The industry has made similar arguments throughout the past year as permitting legislation moved through the House.
At a September 2025 hearing on the issue, USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter told lawmakers it can take more than three years to repair a single fiber line on federal land.
His warning set the tone for a House Communications and Technology Subcommittee hearing on 29 permitting bills, where Republicans cast permitting as the single biggest obstacle to new fiber and wireless deployment.
Industry and municipal groups have clashed repeatedly since then over how to balance faster reviews against local control of rights-of-way.
NCTA’s Senate push follows a stalled House effort
It’s the latest sign that the broadband industry sees this year’s permitting reform conversation on Capitol Hill as an opening to secure changes it has sought for years.
NCTA appears to be working the Senate side this time, after the House’s own effort stalled in April, after months in the making.
The Communications and Technology Subcommittee cleared a package of 18 GOP-led bills in November, including measures that would set shot clocks and fee limits on state and local permitting agencies, ease railroad crossings for ISPs, and exempt certain projects from environmental and historic reviews.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee then cleared a package of seven broadband permitting bills in December, six of them were bipartisan, the seventh bill was the American Broadband Deployment Act.
That bill ballooned into a roughly 100-page omnibus incorporating more than 20 permitting and preemption provisions covering wireless siting, wireline deployment, cable franchising, and federal reviews. Local governments pushed back hard.
The bill was placed on the House calendar and scheduled for a floor vote in April, but Republican leadership pulled it at the last minute after it became clear the votes weren’t there.
NCTA wants federal agencies included in permitting reform
NCTA’s letter specifically asks that any permitting reform legislation reach the federal agencies its member companies most frequently have to work with to complete deployment projects.
That list includes: the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of the Interior, including the Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs; Department of Defense installations, including the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; and the Department of Transportation.
NCTA is asking that reforms give these agencies clearer legal authority, adequate resources, and better coordination tools so that federal policy, taxpayer funding, and private investment can be aligned toward the shared goal of faster broadband buildout.
The letter was addressed to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, the committee’s ranking member, as well as Sen. Mike Lee, chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Martin Heinrich, that committee’s ranking member.
Copies were also sent to Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz and Ranking Member Maria Cantwell.
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