Permit Site Guides Broadband Deployment
New Federal “Rights-of-Way” Permit Web Site Established to Facilitate Wider Broadband Deployment
To promote broadband deployment by opening up access to federal lands for placement of advanced fiber and wireless technologies, the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has launched a central federal Web site with information about the rights-of-way permit process for telecommunications projects on federal lands.
Project managers planning broadband infrastructure investment can now visit http://www.ntia.doc. gov/frowsite/index.html for general information about obtaining a rights-of-way permit over federallyowned or federally-controlled real property.
“When President Bush described his bold vision for broadband in America, he said that to get broadband spread throughout the country, we need to make sure it’s easy to build across federal lands,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce Michael D. Gallagher. “A central Web site is just the first step in a government-wide effort to simplify and streamline rights-of-way processes at the federal, state and local level, in order to reach the goal set by President Bush: universal, affordable access to broad-band technology for all Americans by 2007.”
The central federal Web site complements an electronic report on state and local rights-of-way that NTIA established in 2003 as a resource for state and local land managers, telecommunications providers, and other rights-of-way stakeholders. The state and local site includes a state-by-state matrix that provides the rights-of-way laws relating to jurisdiction, compensation, timelines, nondiscrimination, mediation and condemnation in all fifty states and the District of Columbia.
The new federal site, hosted and maintained by NTIA, also lists and links to the appropriate, updated Web sites for each federal agency with authority to grant rights-of-way permits on federal lands. A referral Web page also will be established in the business gateway section of the FirstGov.gov Web site, the official U.S. gateway to all government information. Establishment of this Web site is one of the recommendations contained in the report of the Federal Rights-of-Way Working Group published April 26, 2004.
