It is evident from this Study that the emergence and public deployment of broadband technologies in local or community environments under an ‘open access’ strategy that is ‘user’ or ‘community’ - centric rather than ‘operator-centric’ is moving ahead very fast.   There are countless initiatives around the world deploying wireless and fibre technologies and numerous different strategies, structures and stakeholders being involved.

It is also clear that there are two main fronts along which this open access deployment is being driven.   The one is represented by an informal, and yet amazingly ‘network-connected’ community of grass-root enthusiasts who, by using and further developing the wireless technologies of license exempt spectrum, are building pockets of connectivity in both the developed and developing world.   There is, as yet, no direct connection between this grass-root movement and the other broad front advancing the argument for and deployment of LOANs – namely municipal authorities and local government agencies in towns and communities.

 
What is starkly apparent however is that both of these vanguards of LOAN deployment are flourishing and growing despite, rather than because of, any specific public policy or regulatory provision within the specific national context in which they find themselves.  Indeed, the evidence to date suggests where there is any national or international public policy focus on the emergence of LOAN infrastructure, it is as likely to be stimulated by incumbent telecommunications operators, their conventional competitors and cable operators, who see the emergence of such LOAN deployment as a clear threat to their existing business models.  These models are based upon vertically integrated network ownership and control through service provision in order to generate greater revenue from end users and hence a higher return on infrastructure investment.

 
It is not unreasonable to assume that at some point, these two LOAN vanguards may be subsumed into a more widespread and better-understood and coherent advancement of public local open access infrastructure development.  But there is no reason to suppose at this early stage of LOAN development that there is any virtue or value in attempting to frame public policy with the specific intention of bringing about or accelerating this coherence between these twin vanguards of LOAN deployment.  Each of these avenues should be encouraged and, wherever possible, used as a rich source of learning so that over time, more generalised lessons and principles might begin to emerge which can form the basis of consistent public policy templates for replication, adaptation and adoption elsewhere.

However, it is worth considering what might constitute essential elements of a Road Map for each of them.

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