Trump Takes Action to Speed Infrastructure Environmental Reviews

In a move that could help speed wireless and wired broadband buildouts, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order "establishing a framework" for "expediting" environmental reviews and approvals for "high priority infrastructure projects."

Broadband was not among the projects the White House named in announcing the President had signed the order, saying "[d]elays and other inefficiencies in the environmental review and permitting process are severely impeding critically important projects to rebuild and modernize our nation’s infrastructure, such as highways, bridges, tunnels, the electrical grid, ports, water systems, airports, railways and pipelines."

The executive order had not been published on the White House website at presstime, but the President has been pushed by tech companies to make broadband infrastructure part of his trillion-dollar infrastructure plan.

One of the impediments that has been cited to those broadband buildouts are such environmental impact reviews.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.