What a Dig Once Policy Is and Why It Speeds Up Local Fiber Buildout

October 9, 2026 · Fiber internet for real communities

CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Check whether your town has a Dig Once policy any time there's talk of road repaving, water line replacement, or new fiber investment. It matters because digging up a street is the single biggest cost in building fiber networks, and a town that doesn't plan ahead ends up paying for that same street to be dug up three or four times instead of once.

The checklist

• Mandatory conduit during road work Any time a street is opened for paving, water, or sewer work, empty conduit (plastic pipe for future fiber) gets installed at the same time, even if no provider is ready to use it yet.
• A public notice system for planned digs The town posts upcoming roadwork far enough ahead (often 60 to 90 days, though timelines vary by jurisdiction) so ISPs and other utilities can ask to join the project.
• One permitting office, not five Coordinated permitting across public works, transportation, and utility departments so a provider isn't stuck getting separate sign-offs from each one on the same project.
• Clear rules for who can use the conduit A policy that says how shared conduit gets allocated, in what order, and under what terms, so it doesn't sit empty because nobody wrote down how to use it.
• A fair cost-sharing formula Spelled-out math for splitting the cost of the extra conduit among the town and any providers who use it, so it doesn't become a surprise line item or a political fight later.
• Some form of enforcement A way to make sure the policy actually gets followed on every project, not just the ones someone remembers to flag. Without this, a Dig Once policy is just a nice paragraph in a planning document.

The two that people skip

The two most commonly missing pieces are the advance notice window and the conduit access rules, and both are expensive to skip.

Advance notice sounds like paperwork, but it's the whole point. If a town only tells providers about a repaving project after the asphalt crew has already shown up, there's no time to coordinate. The street gets closed, fixed, and reopened, and six months later it gets dug up again for fiber. Every time that happens, the town absorbs the cost of traffic control, restoration, and resident frustration twice instead of once. A real notice window, posted on a public calendar or portal, is what turns "dig once" from a slogan into something that actually happens.

Conduit access rules get skipped because they're the least glamorous part of the policy to write. It's easy to pass a rule that says "install conduit during road work." It's harder to decide who gets to use that conduit, in what order, for how long, and at what price. Towns that skip this step often end up with conduit in the ground that nobody can use, because no provider knows the terms and nobody wants to be first to ask. A few years later, that conduit might even be forgotten or undocumented, which means it gets dug up and replaced anyway. The fix isn't complicated: write down the access terms before the conduit goes in, not after.

There's a cost to ignoring both of these, and it's not abstract. Every repeat dig on the same street typically means new permits, new traffic control, new restoration of paving or landscaping, and months of added schedule. Multiply that across dozens of streets over a decade and the gap between a town with a working Dig Once policy and one without it can be measured in years of delayed broadband access, not weeks.

For a resident or small business owner, the practical question is simple: when a town council or utility talks about broadband expansion, ask whether there's a Dig Once policy and whether it has teeth, meaning real notice timelines, real access rules, and real enforcement. A policy that exists only on paper doesn't move fiber any faster than no policy at all.

For municipal leaders, the policy is one of the cheapest tools available for speeding up buildout, because it doesn't require new funding so much as better timing and better paperwork. It also tends to make a town more attractive to providers evaluating where to build next, since it lowers construction cost and risk on their end too.

At GigSpeed, we look at Dig Once policies as a strong early signal when we're scoping where fiber can go in next, since it usually means less construction cost and a faster path to service for the people living there.