Federal Broadband Deployment Tracking Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3343, the Federal Broadband Deployment Tracking Act.

Over the past 4 years, the Biden administration has worked hard to implement historic investments made by Congress in the bipartisan infrastructure law to expand broadband access to all Americans.

This includes the $42 billion BEAD program, which will empower States and territories to close the digital divide and bring high-speed, affordable internet to unserved and underserved communities.

It should come as no surprise that many of the communities lacking internet access are rural, remote, and sparsely populated areas. Like in my own district, areas like Kenansville, Deer Park, Bull Creek, and Yeehaw Junction. Bringing this infrastructure to them will, in many cases, require crossing large geographic areas.

This is especially true in many of our Western States where significant amounts of territory are owned and managed by the Federal Government. H.R. 3343 is going to help bring more transparency to the status and progress of applications to deploy communications infrastructure on publicly owned and managed lands.

The bill requires the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to develop and implement a plan to assist communications providers in navigating the burdens of deploying communications infrastructure on public lands.

Ultimately, this bill should lead to more robust collaboration between those responsible for reviewing permit applications for Federal lands and communications providers who are trying to bring high-speed internet to all of our constituents.

I thank Representative Pfluger for his leadership on this bill that I was happy to co-introduce with him. This bipartisan legislation is the product of regular order, and I am pleased to see it taken up by the full House today.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. SOTO. Mr. Speaker, it is time to get this done for the American people. I yield back the balance of my time.

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