investment plans in any way - for example, British Telecom (BT), Telecom Italia and Slovak Telecom have all stated publicly that the fi nancial crisis has not yet affected their investment plans. However, some other operators have either cut their capital expenditure (for example, the Spanish incumbent Telefonica cut its capex by -7.2% in 2008) or recognized that future investment plans depend on cooperation with public authorities – as is the case with Telekomunikacja Polska in Poland. In some countries, there have been direct calls for greater government involvement in the telecom sector fol-lowing Internet access is driving greater availability of con-verged services, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and IPTV. Firms and organizations need to learn how to move from using basic broadband con-nectivity towards truly effective participation in the digital economy. Based on the growth and productivity benefi ts of ICTs, many OECD governments have now launched national broadband stimulus plans – see the Gov-ernment stimulus plans announced in Table 3 and Figure 5, often as part of broader economic recovery plans. These plans are very recent, dating from 2008 or early 2009. Some plans update or extend existing national broadband schemes that have been planned for some time (e.g., Australia’s National Broadband Plan and Ireland’s National Broadband Scheme). Most importantly, Government plans have often been developed in parallel with the existing invest-ment the fi nancial crisis – there have been calls from the industry for greater government involve-ment in Nigeria, for example. 34 Booz & Company (2009) note that despite consum-er and business demand and the desire for increased national competitiveness, NGN fi bre broadband network deployments to date have been limited, with the top fi fteen countries comprising mainly OECD economies. They note that “although operators may still be considering tactical urban deployments of NGNs, they are reluctant to consider nationwide deployments, particularly in light of the current economic crisis”. 35 This view suggests that operators could respond to the current limitations on funds by plans of many operators and incumbents (see Table 3). The fi nancial crisis has cut directly across the NGN upgrade and roll-out plans of many incumbent operators in Europe and Asia, some of which have been underway since 2002-2004. Some operators insist that the fi nancial crisis has not affected their 36