Adoption of Broadband Services: The Role of National Policies

Broadband is seen as a key infrastructure for developing the information society. For this reason many Governments are actively engaged in stimulating investments in broadband infrastructures and use of broadband services. This chapter compares a wide range of broadband strategies in the most successful markets for broadband. This is done through analysis of national policies in three European countries-Denmark, Sweden, and Germany-and the U.S., Japan, and South Korea. We concluded that successful implementation of broadband depends on the kind of policy measures to be taken at the national level. Many countries have provided active support for stimulating diffusion of broadband and national variants of this type of policies in different countries are important for an explanation of national differences in adoption of broadband.