This section considers the role of private sector, non-government and local community (or municipal actors) in universal access and service (UAS). In most cases, these participants play a developmental role and, as such, represent bottom-up rather than top-down policy driven initiatives. However, non-government and local community participants are considered here because, to greater or lesser degrees, they have become significant contributors to the objective of reaching underserved populations and of bringing communications and improved livelihoods to the poorer segments of society.
It is not practical to attempt to include all possible non-government linkages to UAS because of the risk of creating confusion and reducing the impact of UAS policy, or indeed the responsibility of policy makers and regulators to establish and lead UAS policy. However, various trends are clearly significant and should not be ignored. These are:
- Micro-finance and private entrepreneur led village phone initiatives, are discussed in Section 3.3.1;
- Community and municipal broadband networks, presented in Section 3.3.2; and
- Internet public access, telecentres, and cyber cafés experiences summarized in Section 3.3.3.