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It is clear that the current process is not delivering optimal outcomes. In December 2021 and January 2022, for instance, the lack of interagency coordination and communication about mid-band 5G spectrum allocation between the FCC and the Federal Aviation Authority led to significant challenges for the U.S. aviation industry. Over the past two years, the FCC has failed to move spectrum into the commercial marketplace at the same pace and cadence that it did in the recent past. Creating better mechanisms to improve communication and cooperation between different federal agencies could enable a more effective and coordinated U.S. government telecommunications strategy. The White House should work with Congress to establish a spectrum coordination process that will work for both commercial and federal users.

Modernize infrastructure rules. By 2016, the construction of new cell sites—the building blocks for 5G—had essentially flatlined in America. Because of outdated permitting rules, it cost too much and took too long to build wireless infrastructure, so the FCC went to work. The agency updated the environmental and historic preservation rules that needlessly drove up the cost and slowed down the timeline for adding small cells. The FCC put in place guardrails to address outlier fees and delays imposed at the state and local levels on those same small-cell projects. It modernized the permitting process in several additional ways as well.

Those FCC reforms delivered results. They allowed America’s private sector to bring thousands of families across the digital divide and to keep Americans connected during the pandemic. In fact, infrastructure builds accelerated at a record pace after those reforms. In 2019, for instance, U.S. providers built over 46,000 new cell sites—a sixty-fivefold increase over 2016 levels.

The FCC has not engaged in any similar infrastructure reforms in recent years, and there is much more that needs to be done. For instance, the FCC’s prior reforms focused on streamlining the rules for small wireless facilities. The FCC should now explore similar action for the deployment of other wired infrastructure by imposing limits on the fees that local and state governments can charge for reviewing those wireline applications and time restrictions on the government’s decision-making process.

The next Administration should also work to address the delays that

continue to persist when it comes to building Internet infrastructure on federal lands. This is an area where the FCC itself has very little jurisdiction,