Engagement
Advocacy and Policy Leadership
The Broadband Commission engages in high-level advocacy to promote
broadband in developing countries and underserved communities to
promote achievement of the MDGs by 2015. One of the central roles of
the Commission is to advocate for higher priority to be given to
broadband infrastructure in the highest policy circles to ensure
that the benefits of broadband infrastructure and services are
realized in all countries. Governments and industry need to work
together, hand-in-hand, to devise strategies for driving the
roll-out of these networks much more proactively.
To date, the Commission’s initial outcomes have included several
major reports , including “A
2010 Leadership Imperative: The Future Built on Broadband ”
presented to United Nations Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-moon in
September 2010, before the 2010 United Nations MDG Summit in New
York. It is a concise, high-level report that directly reflects
inputs from the Commission’s community of high-level business
executives and policy-makers and contains a number of policy
recommendations and “Declaration of Broadband Inclusion for All”.
In October 2011, the Commission is jointly hosting a
Broadband Leadership Summit
with ITU Telecom preceding the
ITU Telecom
World 2011 event. The Summit convenes a number of Heads of
State, leading CEOs, senior policy-makers and visionaries from
across the ICT sector to debate the issues that matter in the
deployment of broadband infrastructure and services.
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Analysis and Evaluation
The Broadband Commission also engages in analysis and evaluation.
Its second major report, “Broadband:
A Platform for Progress”, is a comprehensive analytical report
published in June 2011 that looks at financing models, returns on
investment, technology choices and strategies for deployment across
a range of different types of economies, including country case
studies.
At its second meeting in New York in September 2010, the Commission
also established a number of
Working Groups to
focus on a range of vital issues relating to specific areas of
importance. These Working Groups have studied in closer detail a
range of different policy areas where investments must be made to
maximize the benefits of broadband infrastructure and services.
The Commission is also working on developing more detailed broadband
targets to monitor the development of policy indicators as well as
the roll-out and take-up of broadband infrastructure and services
around the world. It has also created a dynamic online repository to
help promote broadband implementation. The
Sharehouse is open
to all and features case studies, best practice, analytical reports
and policy recommendations.
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Call to Action
Above all, the Commission believes that the benefits of broadband as
critical infrastructure for accelerating the achievement of the MDGs
can only be fully realized if there is a high-level recognition of
the importance of broadband. This is why many Commissioners have
committed personally to issuing a call to action through their many
activities and engagements.
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