Developing successful public-private partnerships to foster investment in universal broadband networks

Broadband Series

Source: International Telecommunication Union (ITU)

Author: Matt Yardley

Excerpt:

ITU recognizes the importance of broadband services being accessible to consumers and businesses, irrespective of their location. The purpose of this report is to highlight the best practices used by publicprivate partnership (PPP) projects to successfully implement universal broadband projects, and thereby improve broadband access to unserved and underserved locations. A total of 13 PPP broadband projects have been researched as part of this project. This report takes a broad definition of what PPP means, i.e. any project where there is a mix of private- and public-sector involvement.

The projects were selected to provide insights and lessons learned from projects from emerging and developed markets across most world regions. To maximize the number and type and best practices and lessons learned, the projects were selected to include a wide variety of technologies, investment models and funding sources, as well as a variety of approaches by managing authorities to the projects. One of the projects – Lithuania's Rural Area IT Network (RAIN) project – has previously been described as part of the European Union Guide to broadband investment...

The ITU defines 'broadband' as a service with a minimum download speed of 256 kbit/s, but some of the projects referred to in this report define broadband as a service with a minimum download speed of 128 kbit/s. For the purposes of this report, 'next-generation broadband' refers to an evolution away from traditional, exchange- or central-office-based broadband technologies like Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL); however, it should be noted that there is no globally recognized definition for nextgeneration broadband.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

International Cooperation

Public Sector

Private Sector

Partnership