Summary

Background / Terms of Reference

Access to the internet is becoming a pre-requisite for improving any country's economic and social welfare since it provides a conduit to enable open and accessible government, enhance business competitiveness and improve the quality of their citizens' lives through improved delivery of services such as health and education. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) group of countries, in many instances, have not only achieved ubiquitous access to basic internet services, but have also succeeded in achieving high penetration levels of broadband access, which in turn facilitates more complex and effective service provision.

With 800,000 communities still lacking connection to the Internet, developing countries are struggling to provide any form of access with rural and remote areas, and even some major urban areas are almost devoid of affordable internet services, which further contributes to the widening of the digital, and, therefore, economic divide.

This study is therefore a first-of-its-kind attempt to provide a systematic review of a special type of access initiative, that of localized broadband.  These initiatives, often deployed by individual champions in communities and municipalities, may potentially provide a partial alternative, "bottom-up" approaches.  The study is primarily aimed at local policy makers and identifies some of the basic building blocks one should consider when developing such local initiatives.