Picking Communities – Urban Versus Rural not commercially sustainable and does not yield the full economic returns. 45 The investments needed for FTTx networks are very large indeed, while FTTx could cost up to six times more to deploy in rural areas than for urban, high population-density areas 46 (although Booz & Co (2009) estimate the cost of deploying fi bre to rural areas to be only double that of urban areas). Ac-cording The returns and commercial viability of broadband networks also depend heavily on the area in which they are deployed. Ericsson’s experience suggests that over 70-80% of investment in a typical Fibre-To-The Home (FTTH) network (not including back-haul and transport networks) is in passive plant and civil con-struction, to an EU analysis, up to EUR 300 billion with a large proportion of this amount is in (US$ 375 billion) might be needed to upgrade exist-ing providing the fi nal drop (up to 300m) to the premis-es. access networks in the EU to fi bre.47 Investment 43 The cost per household of deploying FTTH is estimated to be between US$ 300-2,500 depending on geography, which Heavy Reading notes “will limit mass roll-out in certain countries”.44 However, mass roll-out is what is needed - deployments of copper and fi bre are most easily justifi ed in urban areas, where high population density and a large base of willing, educated subscribers with higher average incomes offer the prospect of greater margins. totalling EUR 250 billion (US$ 313 billion) might be needed to roll out fi bre networks in the original 15 EU Member States, with deployment costing from EUR 1,000 (US$ 1,252) per customer in urban areas, to EUR 6,000 (US$ 7,510) per customer in rural areas.48 Based on the experience of the UK, Analysys Mason notes that deployment costs of Fibre-To-The-Cabinet (FTTC) are constant across high population density areas, but much higher in more sparsely populated areas, highlighting the need for creative thinking about how to make rural areas more attractive to investment.49 Broadband networks (like mobile and other network investments) need fast and widespread deployment to attract take-up and amortize their fi xed costs over a mass-market base of business, government, and residential subscribers. Failure to achieve suffi cient scale quickly results in a high-cost operation which is To address urban/rural differences in provision, broadband universal service obligations are one option; national broadband policies and state in- Confronting the Crisis: ICT Stimulus Plans for Economic Growth 45