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 federally-owned 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 broadband 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.
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