Telephone and cable companies are routinely slammed for being slow to build infrastructure in rural areas. Critics wrongly attribute delays to “market failure,” claiming that because rural service yields low profits, carriers simply aren’t interested. This reasoning is used to justify expensive and often opaque subsidy schemes for rural phone companies, or worse, multimillion dollar municipal broadband projects that fall short of goals and land cities deep in debt.

Rural-broadband investment is more likely to get a boost if the regulations on rights of way were reviewed and streamlined. That’s the point of the Broadband Conduit Act of 2017, nicknamed the “Dig Once” bill, which aims to create a standardized, economical process to facilitate right-of-way access for broadband construction along federal highways. The House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will hold a hearing on the draft bill Tuesday.