Some of you might recall the campaign I launched in 2001: “Broadbanding local communities”. In all I spoke to over 50 municipalities in an attempt to make them take control over the broadbanding of their local communities. Around the world more than 1,000 local communities now do have at least some form of local broadband. After eight years of experience (more realistically however, more like three to five years of actual implementations), we are now beginning to see some trends in this market.

In general the more entrepreneurial councils and municipalities are the ones that are looking at their own broadband infrastructure. Communities that have a clear understanding of the economic and social benefits of these initiatives are leading the broadband charge.

Of course, in some countries – Sweden, for instance – local councils have built up expertise over a much longer period, but even in this country the real social and economic effects of broadband have only become more relevant over the past three to five years. Initially it was simply launched to stop telcos digging up the streets.

Many of the more recently broadbanded communities now have a leading edge on the utilisation of this infrastructure and have since built up considerable expertise in this field – so much so that in several countries the incumbents are starting to utilise some of these local networks. This is occurring in Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada and the USA and I predict that this will be an ongoing trend.

In many countries incumbents, both telcos and cable-cos, are still reluctant to roll out fibre broadband networks, as they can’t see the business case for it, and/or they wish to protect their incumbent business. On the other hand, local communities are receiving the support of government organisations, which are using these networks for a range of social services in healthcare, education, multicultural, indigenous and other community services.

Local communities have also learned valuable, and sometimes costly, lessons – such as how difficult it is to provide good coverage and good quality over WiFi networks. Most of these networks have been abandoned, scaled down or replaced by fibre-based plans.

The global credit crunch has severely damaged the financials of some of the local councils and this has somewhat dampened the enthusiasm of municipalities caught up in this crunch; however, with better credit facilities becoming available it is to be hoped that this will have been just a hiccup.

For further information see 2008 Global Broadband Market - Demand for Faster Networks