In order to meet the increasing demands on local Governments to provide enhanced levels of services to meet the economic and social demands of its citizens, there has been greater attention focussed on the use of more sophisticated electronic communications platforms and services.  Local Governments are increasingly examining the deployment of their own broadband communications networks, as a more cost effective and sometimes the only alternative to the reliance on the incumbent telecommunications industry.

 
The primary drivers for municipal involvement in developing local access networks vary, but the most often cited reasons are to:
 

• Lower the cost of providing municipal services
• Increase government efficiency and productivity
• Promote local economic development and competitiveness
• Address social development and inclusion
• Improve the availability and affordability of broadband Internet services

It may be self evident, but nonetheless worth noting, that in any local geographic area (particularly in the developed world) it is the local public administration and other local public sector agencies that generate and receive the greatest ‘intra-area’ communication traffic.  Although these public sector agencies are necessarily required to communicate with central government and other agencies beyond the limits of their own area, nevertheless there is an undoubted priority to communicating with the constituency they serve – which, by definition, are all located within that area.  This being so, the local Government administration and other public agencies are likely to be by far the greatest financial beneficiaries in terms of financial savings from the deployment of a LOAN type infrastructure.

Unfortunately, most public policy in the developed world around this e-Government topic is developed from a Central Government perspective around the individual ministries and agencies such that emphasis and public policy direction is directed towards linking within and not across public agencies (e.g. linking hospitals with hospitals across the country on a private network, schools with schools, police with police and so on).  This ‘top-down’ approach to local broadband deployment within the public sector totally misses the potential benefits that we believe will accrue at the local community level from a policy which encourages all the public sector agencies within that local area to be linked with each other and the constituency they jointly serve.
 

In order to gain an improved understanding of municipal broadband networks, it is important to examine the entire process and the factors influencing how these networks develop from concept to implementation.

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