Broadband policy for the future: Building upon conceptual framework
Paper i proceeding, 2010
Nowadays, broadband has been gained much attention from both national and international as an
effective tool in driving society to a more advanced economy. Different policies and initiatives have
been implemented in different countries while trying to reach the same goal which is to increase
broadband growth in a country. Increasing broadband growth in a country results in the growing of
opportunity for people to participate or enjoy benefits which has been brought by this network
society.
The European Union (EU), for example, has initiated several mechanisms or policies for more than
ten years with an aim to ensure that the EU fully benefits for generations to come from the changes
that the information society is bringing. At the about the same period of time, the development of
broadband policy has also been initiated in Japan. Even though the development in these two
jurisdictions results in the high broadband deployment these days, the difference can be seen in
terms of perspective for the future development. The EU has achieved broadband growth which
based on DSL technologies while Japan has achieved growth of fiber networks. It cannot be denied
that applications development and more users in information society require more and more of high
network capacity which can be pursued efficiently through fiber networks. In this sense, broadband
policy which has been developed in both jurisdictions for more than ten years cannot only be taken
as a tool to increase broadband deployment in a country, but it should also be taken as a strategy for
future development of a country.
From this perspective, the paper presents a conceptual framework of broadband policy where both
theoretical concepts and case studies on the EU and Japan will be addressed in order to support the
idea. The theoretical concepts mentioned in the paper will be focused more on the institutional
environment, to explain the dynamic of social and economic development in a holistic fashion.
Building upon theoretical concept and case studies, the paper presents broadband policy from two
aspects, which are the sector agenda and the strategic agenda. The sector agenda consists of
strategies or measures implemented by a country with the primary objective of increasing
broadband growth in a country. Meanwhile, the strategic agenda comprises strategies of using
broadband for some specific national agenda consisting of the global market, country
competitiveness and sustainable development. Toward the end, the paper suggests that the
integration of those two aspects into national policy for long-term development depends on many
criteria, in particular the co-dependence of related actors. Therefore, broadband policy is no longer
an issue set by a single government entity but requires integration between several ministries and
agencies, a complex and multi-faceted integration which will be explored in this paper.