by Dave Garb, Legislative Committee Chair
American Broadband Act of 2025
On December 3rd, the House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, hastily voted on a group of bills known together as H.R. 2289, The American Broadband Act of 2025. Inside this potpourri of bills, was one that could affect just about all cable franchises in the United States. Basically, this is H.R. 3557 all over again.
From Gerard Lederer, Attorney – Best, Best and Krieger
A few of the ways this bill impact local franchises include:
- Eliminating cable franchise renewals, thereby removing ability of state or local communities to enforce franchise obligations such as build-out, customer service, and PEG.
- Granting a cable operator the unilateral right to terminate a franchise, but creates no obligation to remove a cable system from the rights-of-way.
- Affirmatively granting cable operators the right to provide non-cable services while prohibiting localities from imposing any fees on cable operators’ revenue from non-cable services.
This bill has a series of provisions that don’t just affect cable franchising, but may actually affect local governments. The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), The National League of Cities (NLC), The National Association of Counties (NACo), and The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) wrote a joint letter to express their strong opposition to the bills before the Communications and Technology Subcommittee that would preempt local authority over public rights-of-way and land use.
From Mike Wassenaar, President-Alliance for Community Media (ACM)
Whether you are in a state franchising state or a local franchising state. H.R. 2289 affects any organization that benefits from local cable franchising, such as a local government, a school district, or a community media center, nonprofit that’s operating in a local community.
It’s a wide range of organizations and a wide range of people around the United States that will be affected by some of the measures of the bill.
The American Broadband Deployment Act of 2025 is a very interesting logic model in terms of how to get broadband to rural communities that don’t have adequate broadband connections. If you have communities that don’t have broadband, we need to get rid of the rights of all communities that may have broadband.
A couple of the problems H.R. 2289 will cause is that it would implement shot clocks for decision making on new franchises or wireless applications and codifies them. So that if there’s no response from local government by a shot clock deadline, there’s deemed granted provisions for the application, even though the application may be defective.
There are restrictions on local government’s rights in terms of oversight for both telecommunications companies and cable companies. The bill eliminates state and local oversight over cable sales and transactions for mergers and acquisitions, with the idea that if we just eliminate consumer oversight, we’ll have more broadband in rural areas. H.R. 2289, also strips local governments of property rights and compensation in favor of cable, wireless, and telecommunications providers.
Another provision says that a cable company can alter or terminate a franchise with notice based on a number of conditions, including commercial impracticability. Any item within a contract can be altered by a company with 120 days’ notice. A community could dispute this, but they’d have to go to court or to the FCC to dispute it. There’s no negotiation in terms of sort of the way in which power is structured in the bill.”
During this markup, New Jersey Representatives Frank Pallone and Robert Menendez voiced very strong support for local communities and expressed quite coherently a set of protections for local rights. This bill remains a partisan measure even though there was a series of bipartisan measures that were put forward by the Committee on Energy and Commerce that all sides supported.
Now, the bills have been marked up. It passed along what was essentially a party line vote and is waiting for the next steps, which could happen in 2026 as this bill moves forward.
If you need more information, contact:
David Garb, Legislative Chair, Jersey Access Group davegarb@paps.net
Like this:
Like Loading...
Legislative Update December 2025: News from Trenton & Washington, DC – Changes in the FCC
Posted: January 6, 2026 by Doug Seidel
by Dave Garb, Legislative Committee Chair
American Broadband Act of 2025
On December 3rd, the House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, hastily voted on a group of bills known together as H.R. 2289, The American Broadband Act of 2025. Inside this potpourri of bills, was one that could affect just about all cable franchises in the United States. Basically, this is H.R. 3557 all over again.
From Gerard Lederer, Attorney – Best, Best and Krieger
A few of the ways this bill impact local franchises include:
This bill has a series of provisions that don’t just affect cable franchising, but may actually affect local governments. The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), The National League of Cities (NLC), The National Association of Counties (NACo), and The National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) wrote a joint letter to express their strong opposition to the bills before the Communications and Technology Subcommittee that would preempt local authority over public rights-of-way and land use.
From Mike Wassenaar, President-Alliance for Community Media (ACM)
Whether you are in a state franchising state or a local franchising state. H.R. 2289 affects any organization that benefits from local cable franchising, such as a local government, a school district, or a community media center, nonprofit that’s operating in a local community.
It’s a wide range of organizations and a wide range of people around the United States that will be affected by some of the measures of the bill.
The American Broadband Deployment Act of 2025 is a very interesting logic model in terms of how to get broadband to rural communities that don’t have adequate broadband connections. If you have communities that don’t have broadband, we need to get rid of the rights of all communities that may have broadband.
A couple of the problems H.R. 2289 will cause is that it would implement shot clocks for decision making on new franchises or wireless applications and codifies them. So that if there’s no response from local government by a shot clock deadline, there’s deemed granted provisions for the application, even though the application may be defective.
There are restrictions on local government’s rights in terms of oversight for both telecommunications companies and cable companies. The bill eliminates state and local oversight over cable sales and transactions for mergers and acquisitions, with the idea that if we just eliminate consumer oversight, we’ll have more broadband in rural areas. H.R. 2289, also strips local governments of property rights and compensation in favor of cable, wireless, and telecommunications providers.
Another provision says that a cable company can alter or terminate a franchise with notice based on a number of conditions, including commercial impracticability. Any item within a contract can be altered by a company with 120 days’ notice. A community could dispute this, but they’d have to go to court or to the FCC to dispute it. There’s no negotiation in terms of sort of the way in which power is structured in the bill.”
During this markup, New Jersey Representatives Frank Pallone and Robert Menendez voiced very strong support for local communities and expressed quite coherently a set of protections for local rights. This bill remains a partisan measure even though there was a series of bipartisan measures that were put forward by the Committee on Energy and Commerce that all sides supported.
Now, the bills have been marked up. It passed along what was essentially a party line vote and is waiting for the next steps, which could happen in 2026 as this bill moves forward.
If you need more information, contact:
David Garb, Legislative Chair, Jersey Access Group davegarb@paps.net
Share this:
Like this:
Category: Latest JAG News, Legislation/Regulation