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GOP overhaul of broadband permit laws: Cities hate it, cable companies love it

52 points by duxup 1y ago

YouWhy 1y ago
Is the question at hand about balancing local building authorization with the government's intent to encourage a specific kind of national infrastructure businesses? This seems to be supported by this quote: > Putting arbitrary deadlines on state, local, and Tribal governments to start and finish complicated permit reviews... I'm not an American but I am alarmed at the recent tendency for bad-faith rule making. However - the above sounds in reasonably good faith - is that indeed the case or am I missing some angle?
- bix6 1y ago
  Worth reading the letter from local govs as they lay out why this is such a complicated and slow problem: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251117-Local-Gov-Associations-Opp-Commerce-CT-Markup_merged.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251... No big business in the US acts in good faith so the fact they are cheering this on tells me to be suspect. My read of this is they want to juice returns / timelines by avoiding bureaucracy and the city / local residents will deal with the inevitable mess.
- cyanydeez 1y ago
  Laws on public nuisance sound in good faith, its more about whose in positions of enforcement. GOP would call this the deep state. Regulators and judges have been targets of modern GOP fascism.
- xemdetia 1y ago
  From my perspective depending on where they want to develop it might be trivial to add something time consuming to a proposal such as eminent domain or easement reviews that will run out the shot clock and drown out reasonable questions by local governments. Local governance often is complicated by local (town), regional (county), and state level roles. Additionally depending on the area not all of these roles are even staffed by people working on it full-time.
kylehotchkiss 1y ago
My 30 year old neighborhood in CA is _just_ getting fiber laid now. I have cox over coaxial and my internet uptime is a mess. They don't care, where else am I gonna go? I welcome a federal effort to lay fiber and eliminate any reason a normal consumer would ever need to contact a coax cable for the rest of their lives.
- deafpolygon 1y ago
  It sounds like that’s what it will do. But that’s not the case. Why don’t you complain to your local ISP? It is likely that they are not upgrading the infrastructure that needs to be upgraded. It is a way for massive cable companies to bypass local government, and may make the overall network experience worse. It might put local ISPs out of business that have been serving their communities for years.
- jojomodding 1y ago
  30 years is nothing. There are cities that had to wait for thousands of years before they got fiber.
  - kylehotchkiss 1y ago
    You're right. Thanks for putting that in perspective for me.
renewiltord 1y ago
This sounds fantastic. "Local control over building" always ends up being a bunch of NIMBYs making life hard. Considering the amount of "it will ruin this community" I've heard about literally every possible thing, and the idea of "environmental review" to block a "historic parking lot" from being replaced by a food bank, I think a deadline with by-right building is good.

52 points by duxup 1y ago

Is the question at hand about balancing local building authorization with the government's intent to encourage a specific kind of national infrastructure businesses? This seems to be supported by this quote: > Putting arbitrary deadlines on state, local, and Tribal governments to start and finish complicated permit reviews... I'm not an American but I am alarmed at the recent tendency for bad-faith rule making. However - the above sounds in reasonably good faith - is that indeed the case or am I missing some angle?

bix6 1y ago
Worth reading the letter from local govs as they lay out why this is such a complicated and slow problem: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251117-Local-Gov-Associations-Opp-Commerce-CT-Markup_merged.pdf https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251... No big business in the US acts in good faith so the fact they are cheering this on tells me to be suspect. My read of this is they want to juice returns / timelines by avoiding bureaucracy and the city / local residents will deal with the inevitable mess.
cyanydeez 1y ago
Laws on public nuisance sound in good faith, its more about whose in positions of enforcement. GOP would call this the deep state. Regulators and judges have been targets of modern GOP fascism.
xemdetia 1y ago
From my perspective depending on where they want to develop it might be trivial to add something time consuming to a proposal such as eminent domain or easement reviews that will run out the shot clock and drown out reasonable questions by local governments. Local governance often is complicated by local (town), regional (county), and state level roles. Additionally depending on the area not all of these roles are even staffed by people working on it full-time.

kylehotchkiss 1y ago

My 30 year old neighborhood in CA is _just_ getting fiber laid now. I have cox over coaxial and my internet uptime is a mess. They don't care, where else am I gonna go? I welcome a federal effort to lay fiber and eliminate any reason a normal consumer would ever need to contact a coax cable for the rest of their lives.

deafpolygon 1y ago
It sounds like that’s what it will do. But that’s not the case. Why don’t you complain to your local ISP? It is likely that they are not upgrading the infrastructure that needs to be upgraded. It is a way for massive cable companies to bypass local government, and may make the overall network experience worse. It might put local ISPs out of business that have been serving their communities for years.
jojomodding 1y ago
30 years is nothing. There are cities that had to wait for thousands of years before they got fiber.
- kylehotchkiss 1y ago
  You're right. Thanks for putting that in perspective for me.

renewiltord 1y ago

This sounds fantastic. "Local control over building" always ends up being a bunch of NIMBYs making life hard. Considering the amount of "it will ruin this community" I've heard about literally every possible thing, and the idea of "environmental review" to block a "historic parking lot" from being replaced by a food bank, I think a deadline with by-right building is good.