In most countries where deployment of CGB services have been underway for a number of years, there has been a noticeable slowdown in the deployment of these technologies by the incumbent carriers and cable companies. One of the main reasons is that the prevailing vertically integrated business models demand that more profitable urban and city markets are served whereas the remaining markets in rural and disadvantaged areas, which are considered uneconomic to serve, based on costs of deployment and expected return on investment, are left underserved. There has also been reluctance on the part of the incumbent carriers to consider the use of other technologies (ill suited to the maintenance of their vertically integrated business model), such as wireless, which has exacerbated this. 

Given the importance of broadband to economic and social development of communities and regions, there has been increasing demand in underserved areas for broadband.  The approach to attempting to solve what has increasingly become a digital divide has varied quite considerably by country.  Some countries have adopted national programmes to provide financial and other incentives to carriers to deploy services to less populated areas or have provided financial assistance to enable community groups or local governments to undertake the provision of these services.  However, most of these programmes are unlikely to ensure true universal access to broadband services.  In other instances, the national government has not developed any comprehensive policy.

 
With few exceptions, most OECD countries will continue to have a digital divide for the foreseeable future in rural and less populated areas, because of the lack of available broadband services.  This will be a major driver for communities to look at a variety of options to provide broadband services, such as the building of individual municipal and cooperate to build regional networks.  The Western Isles Connected Communities (WICC) project in Scotland, the Municipal Access Networks (MAN) in Ireland and the planned Government of Catalonia Broadband Project to connect local communities throughout the Catalonia Region of Spain, are some examples of regional networks designed to meet the broadband needs of rural areas.