broadband strategies handbook.pdf - Khazar University

In Denmark, Canada, and Ireland, governments have focused on expandinguniversal access to households. In June 2010, Denmark announced anambitious broadband goal of providing access of at least 100 Mbit/s to allhouseholds and businesses by 2020 (Denmark, National IT and TelecomAgency 2010). To achieve this goal, the Danish government stated thatit would continue to pursue its market-based and technology-neutralapproach, focusing on the deployment of broadband infrastructure inDenmark. Measures to promote broadband have included promoting competitionin the access network and rolling out wireless broadband to coverhard-to-reach areas (Petersen n.d.). By the middle of 2009, out of 2.8 millionhouseholds, fewer than 9,000 did not have access to a broadband connection,and by the end of 2010, all households had access to a broadband connectionof at least a 512 kilobits per second (kbit/s).Canada’s 2009 Economic Action Plan provided Industry Canada withCan $225 million over three years to extend broadband coverage, with thebiggest component of this strategy being the Broadband Canada: ConnectingRural Canadians Program. The program sought to extend broadbandservice to as many unserved and underserved Canadian households as possible,recognizing that, since communities vary greatly in size, the fact that acommunity has broadband access does not always mean that service isavailable to individual households. 5Ireland has attempted to ensure nationwide provision of broadbandthrough its National Broadband Scheme (NBS). 6 The NBS was a governmentproject funded under the National Development Plan to providebroadband coverage to areas in Ireland in which broadband services weredeemed to be insufficient. Under the scheme, users’ connections mustbe “always on” and capable of 1 Mbit/s downloads and 128 kilobits pers econd (kbit/s) uploads. The lowest possible cap on downloads was definedas 10 gigabytes (GB) per month, and the connections had to support virtualprivate networks and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications.Communal and Institutional AccessProviding universal access at the individual user and household levelsmay not always be possible, particularly in developing countries or even indeveloped countries with significant rural or hard-to-reach areas. As aresult, some countries have opted to give greater attention to communal orinstitutional solutions for providing broadband to end users, especially serviceto unserved or underserved areas. These projects are often funded, atleast in part, by resources from universal service funds (USFs). While traditionallythese funds were used primarily or exclusively to support thedeployment of telephony services, they have been expanded to supportExtending Universal Broadband Access and Use 159