摘要：State governments that have elected to make
investments to increase the availability of affordable
broadband service in rural areas and low income urban
neighborhoods should organize their efforts
around a strategy that encourages and leverages locally-
driven initiatives, rather than follow a top-down
approach that seeks to identify and close all broadband
service gaps in a comprehensive fashion. A bottom-
up approach to state broadband policy has three
major advantages. First, it is a conservative policy response
in an economic arena in which the appropriate
role of the public sector is highly contested and in
which private sector deployment is proceeding rapidly,
even as gaps in service in rural and poorer communities
remain. Second, it acknowledges the extraordinary
practical difficulty of identifying and addressing
all broadband infrastructure and service gaps
at any point in time, given data limitations and the
rapid pace at which technologies, services and the
telecommunications industry itself are evolving.
Third, it facilitates the design of solutions that are
unique to the local conditions in places where gaps
exist and where local commitment to policy action is
clearly demonstrated.
