"Currently, too many providers who try to obtain such access are confronted with daunting sets of federal,state and/or municipal regulations that often delay and sometimes defer infrastructure investment and broad deployment," Pai said in the statement.

He also called on the FCC to develop model regulations or best practices to help localities streamline rights-of-way management policies. "We need to eliminate regulatory barriers to innovation and investment at all levels of government," he added.

Matthew Berry, Pai's chief of staff, said that Pai took note of problems Google said it has confronted in its effort to work with communities in California on broadband projects. "The permitting process is so bad there [in California]," he said.

Google picked the Kansas City area out of more than 1,100 communities that applied for a Google network after the Internet firm announced in Feb. 2010 plans to build fiber networks in "a small number of trial locations" in the U.S.

Google and several officials in the Kansas City area have widely praised the Google Fiber project in the past year. None could be reached for comment early Friday.