Today is a moment in time when many countries feel compelled to have a broadband “strategy†or “vision.†On reading various “national broadband strategy†documents, as they are invariably called, one is struck by the remarkable similarities. They mostly start by placing their countries in what the UK National Broadband Strategy 2004 openly calls the “league table†(Department of Trade & Industry [DTI], 2004). The British are pleased that they now have one of the highest broadband growth rates in the G7 because of the policies they put in place after finding themselves lagging in a 2000 OECD report, at 21st position out of 30 countries. The Finns note that in September 2003 they had the fifth highest per capita connections in the EU and that the growth rate in the last third of the year was thrice that of the UK. The Americans are concerned that the United States has lately ceded ground in broadband deployment to its major competitors. The United States now ranks only 12th in broadband penetration among the major industrialized nations. Furthermore, its rate of growth is lagging behind that of the leading OECD countries (InternetNZ, 2006; OECD, 2005).
After the initial sections that provide data on DSL versus cable modem penetration and growth rates, overall broadband penetration across different sectors of society, etc, these documents go on to outline very similar strategies. They invariably call for developing competitive markets and limiting the government’s involvement to areas where corporate investments are not forthcoming. They talk about strategies for aggregating demand in rural areas. They also call for competitive neutrality with regard to the various technological options for delivering broadband services. This similarity carries over to the vocabulary employed.
But it is in the differences, however slight, where the excitement is. For instance, one of the stated objectives in Australia’s National Broadband Strategy is “to foster creativity in the way Australian’s work, live, and play . . .†(Commonwealth of Australia, 2004, p. 8, emphasis in original). While national strategy documents often talk about innovation and economic competitiveness, this is the first instance we have come across (so far) where the term “creativity†has been employed and that too with regard to ordinary citizens and not small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) which have been the focus of typical “innovation†strategies. Malta’s The National Broadband Strategy notes “contrary to what was advocated at the outset of broadband technology, there seems to be no ‘killer application’ which will solely lead to a market increase in the take-up of broadband†(Ministry for Investment, Industry and Information Technology and Malta Communications Authority 2004, p. 10). Many documents talk about content related issues, which is quite different than the preoccupation with the physical infrastructure. There are variations in relation to the “soft infrastructures†such as digital rights management, micro-payments and authentication systems that would facilitate the creation of content by businesses and lay users.
In this paper we try to synthesize these emerging ideas and in the process generate a framework. We start with a few related ideas that have appeared in the literature over the last few years. We then identify four key components of new universal service and illustrate them with examples from other countries. Finally, we offer a few recommendations.